Hey, look-- Apple's got an actual fight on its hands! When it sued the unidentified proprietor of Think Secret for posting the company's trade secrets for public consumption, it probably had no idea that said proprietor would turn out to be a nineteen-year-old Harvard undergrad named Nick Ciarelli. That was a win-lose situation, because while Apple might have seen its case turn into an easy win against a young and poorly-defended client, the company's fans and critics alike were less than comfortable with the idea of a multibillion-dollar corporation laying the legal smackdown on an intelligent kid with lots of initiative who was obviously a big Apple fan himself.

But faithful viewer Got Mac informs us that Nick found a lawyer, and not one that advertises on novelty sponges or offers you a free medium one-topping pizza if you lose your case. Nick's mouthpiece is one Terry Gross, of the firm Gross & Belsky LLP, who was reportedly the very first lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, those guys who fight for free speech and privacy rights specifically in the context of electronic media. According to Gross, "Think Secret's reporting is protected by the First Amendment" and "the Supreme Court has said that a journalist cannot be held liable for publishing information that the journalist obtained lawfully." Since Nick "has not used any improper newsgathering techniques," Gross will seek to have the case dismissed "under a California statute which weeds out meritless claims that threaten our First Amendment rights."

To us, Gross's argument sounds at odds with what we've heard about California law prohibiting the publishing of information that the publisher knows to be a trade secret, but hey, that's why we're the smartass drama queens and he's the law-talkin' guy. At least Nick's defense won't be that he was unaware that Mac mini specs and pricing constituted trade secrets in the first place-- although we'd have paid cash money to see the judge's reaction if they'd tried to pull that sort of move. We'd always wanted to see some laugh themselves into a hernia.

Incidentally, we can't help but see this as a lose-lose development for Apple: its target is no longer defenseless, but the company still has to live with the stigma of having been the bully who picked on the precocious college kid. There's nothing like a little PR nightmare to spice up the soup, though, right? And now that Nick has some serious legal guns in his corner, we can all look forward to some pretty sparks flying in the courtroom pretty soon-- assuming that Gross can't deliver on that "immediate dismissal" nonsense. If he can, we're going to be sorely disappointed at having our most promising chance for real courtroom drama yoinked out from under us. In other words, we want Gross to be good... just not too good.

Personally, we suspect that the whole thing will eventually end in a settlement that will practically define the term "nonevent," just because that's the way these things usually go, but can you imagine the stakes if the case goes all the way to a verdict? If Think Secret wins, it'll practically be open season for Apple leaks and we can all chug broken NDAs and insider reports until we puke, then chug some more. If Apple wins, well... let's just say that pre-Expo speculation is going to have to get a lot more "imaginative" in that scenario.