Trade secrets are trade secrets, even if they're tucked away in the memory of a former employee, the Ohio State Supreme Court has ruled in a dispute involving a Westerville company.

The state's highest court Wednesday unanimously affirmed an earlier judgment that Al Minor & Associates Inc. was right in taking a former worker to court over the issue of trade secrets ownership. The Westerville business sued Robert E. Martin in 2003 after he had solicited 15 clients following a split with the company to start his own management firm. Martin contacted several of Minor & Associates' clients, relying on his recollection, and eventually signed them with his business.

Martin hadn't signed noncompete or trade secrets nondisclosure agreements when he left the business, but Minor & Associates argued before a Franklin County court that his actions constituted a violation of state trade secret laws. Martin's lawyer argued that because the information wasn't in the form of a physical list or obtained through "studied memorization," it was exempt from the rules.

Martin was fined $25,973 when the court ruled in favor of Minor & Associates but he took the case to the 10th District Court of Appeals. The appellate court affirmed the lower court's ruling but passed the dispute on to the state Supreme Court because it conflicted with a decision in a different district on the same issue.

In the ruling this week, authored by Justice Terrence O'Donnell, the high court said protected information doesn't lose its status just because it isn't in a tangible form. State law defines the nature of a trade secret but doesn't specify if casually memorized information is excluded - and it could have, the court ruled.

"We are not in a position to read such language into the statute," O'Donnell wrote.

As the world awaits Yahoo Inc.'s response to Microsoft Corp.'s bold bid to buy the Internet giant, one analyst has come out with an intriguing take on the proposed marriage: It's probably a ploy. Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research speculated Thursday that Microsoft made the stunning $44.6 billion merger proposal as a way to block a possible alliance between Yahoo and another Internet behemoth, Amazon.com.

Chowdry also believes the Microsoft-Yahoo merger will not pass muster with regulators, even if Yahoo accepts the bid.

That analysis runs counter to the predominant view of financial and industry analysts who believe that, while the deal faces many challenges, Microsoft's plan to gobble up Yahoo will likely succeed. More on the Battle for Yahoo.

But Chowdhry said he believes Microsoft made an astoundingly high offer that it knows cannot be matched by other potential buyers and will likely be rejected by US and European regulators. In his view, Microsoft's gambit puts Yahoo in a tough bind.

"I call it strategic deception," he said in an interview. "Now, Yahoo is in limbo. ...If they accept, DOJ will reject it. If they reject it, shareholders will say, 'What are you doing?'"
In his research note, he speculated that "Microsoft's offer to acquire Yahoo was probably a preemptive move to block a potential Amazon.com and Yahoo merger."

Chowdhry said that, based on his checks with contacts in the tech industry, Yahoo was considering shutting down its e-commerce offering and forming a business tie with Amazon.com. He compared this move with Yahoo's decision to shut down its own music store in favor of Real Networks' Rhapsody.

"Contacts feel it is likely that these discussions could be taking a form of an Amazon.com and Yahoo merger, which Microsoft probably did not like," he wrote in the note Thursday.
Yahoo spokeswoman May Petry said the company will not comment on rumors or speculations.

Chowdhry cited Microsoft's failed bid to acquire Intuit Inc. in the mid-1990s which was challenged by the US Justice Department.

"Microsoft has been convicted of past monopolistic behavior - this makes this deal even more tougher to get approval," he said in his note. "Yahoo's management should make sure not to fall into the trap of a potentially fake bid, as Microsoft itself probably may be knowing that the chances of the deal going through is unlikely." Other analysts believe the deal will likely be approved by US and European authorities given Google Inc.'s dominant position in online advertising.

In a research note published Thursday, UBS analyst Heather Bellini said that while the regulatory review will be "complex" in the US and Europe, the proposed could get approved although "the companies could potentially have to divest services such as e-mail or instant messaging to make the combined company more amenable to regulators."

Vasily Alexanian, 36, has said he will die unless he is transferred from his Moscow prison to a specialist hospital, and the Strasbourg-based European court has given three separate instructions to the Russian authorities to move him.

Alexanian is a former vice-president of Yukos, an oil company whose founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was imprisoned in what was widely seen as a Kremlin campaign to punish the businessman for his political ambitions.

A judge at Moscow's Simonovsky district court ordered that Alexanian's trial for fraud and tax evasion be suspended while he receives treatment. It was the first admission by a court that he is gravely ill.

But the court rejected a request for him to be released on bail, saying he was a flight risk and could receive the treatment he needed in the sanatorium at the Sailor's Rest prison in Moscow where he is being held.

'They are not giving me any treatment in there,' Alexanian told reporters from his metal cage in a corner of the courtroom.

'There is no guarantee they will give me access to a specialist clinic. All they are doing is adjourning the trial. That is all. Nothing else.'

Alexanian's lawyers say his condition has left him partially blind, suffering from cancer of the lymph nodes and with suspected tuberculosis.

Meanwhile Thursday, the Clinton campaign asked Obama to debate once a week, but he demurred.

Obama, riding a wave of fundraising from large donors and small Internet contributors, also raised $32 million in January.

Clinton acknowledged Wednesday that she loaned her campaign $5 million late last month as Obama was outraising and outspending her heading into Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests. Some senior staffers on her campaign also are voluntarily forgoing paychecks as the campaign heads into the next round of contests.

Obama and Clinton outpaced all candidates in 2007, with each raising $100 million.

The Obama campaign said on its Web site that $7.2 million has been received since Tuesday evening. Campaign spokesmen said they were confident the figure was accurate.

Buoyed by strong fundraising and a primary calendar in February that plays to his strengths, Obama plans a campaign blitz through a series of states holding contests this weekend and will compete to win primaries in the Mid-Atlantic next week and Hawaii and Wisconsin the following week.

He campaigned in Louisiana Thursday. The state holds its contest Saturday.

Clinton, with less money to spend and less confident of her prospects in the February contests, will instead concentrate on Ohio and Texas, large states with primaries March 4 and where polling shows her with a significant lead. She even is looking ahead to Pennsylvania's primary April 22, believing a large elderly population there will favor the former first lady.

In a sign of Clinton's increasing concern about Obama's growing strength, her campaign manager, Patti Solis, sent a letter Thursday to the Obama campaign seeking five debates between the two candidates before March 4.

"I'm sure we can find a suitable place to meet on the campaign trail," Solis wrote. "There's too much at stake and the issues facing the country are too grave to deny voters the opportunity to see the candidates up close."

Obama rejected a debate proposed as soon as this Sunday to be broadcast on ABC, but his campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday, "there will definitely be more debates, we just haven't set a schedule yet."

The documents, which were declassified and released Wednesday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, detail efforts by Moussaoui's attorneys to send the case back to a lower federal court to find out whether the tapes should have been disclosed and whether they would have influenced his decision to plead guilty.

In a Dec. 18, 2007, letter to the appeals court's chief judge, the Justice Department acknowledged that its lead prosecutor in the case had been informed about the CIA's tapes of al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah being interrogated.

The letter said the prosecutor, Robert A. Spencer, may have been told of the tapes' destruction in late February or early March of 2006, just as the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., was beginning its trial on whether Moussaoui would be eligible to face the death penalty.

Spencer, who was one of three prosecutors on the government's team, "does not recall being told this information," U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg wrote in the Dec. 18 letter to 4th U.S. Circuit Chief Judge Karen J. Williams.

Another prosecutor in Rosenberg's office in Virginia's eastern district who was not involved in the case "recalls telling (Spencer) on one occasion," the letter said.

That second, unnamed, prosecutor learned about the videotapes of Zubaydah "in connection with work he performed in a Department of Justice project unrelated to the Moussaoui case," the letter said.

It is unclear what that project was.

Spencer on Wednesday declined comment.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said the newly released documents underlined the need for an outside investigation of the government's handling of the interrogation tapes.

"This latest disclosure, if true, could amount to a kind of prosecutorial misconduct that undermines our efforts in the administration's 'War on Terror' and the international community's confidence in the American system of justice," Conyers said in a statement. "This is yet another reason that the Justice Department cannot be trusted to police itself and therefore, a special prosecutor must be appointed immediately. The attorney general must be prepared to respond to serious questioning on this issue."

A government official familiar with case said that since the taped interrogations that Spencer knew of only dealt with Zubaydah, the government didn't need to disclose them. Zubaydah already had been declared not relevant to the Moussaoui trial, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case.

Much of the legal correspondence in the Moussaoui case has been classified and under court seal. The documents released Wednesday offer a glimpse into the court's struggle to determine for sure whether the CIA taped its interrogations of terror suspects.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiring with al-Qaida to hijack aircraft, among other crimes. In a 2006 sentencing trial, a jury concluded that Moussaoui's actions furthered the Sept. 11, 2001, plot in which terrorists flew hijacked airliners into buildings in New York and Washington. But the jury ultimately decided to spare his life and sentence him to life in prison.

The December letter came on the heels of one dated Oct. 25, in which Rosenberg informed the court that the CIA did, in fact, possess videotaped interrogations of enemy combatants. During Moussaoui's sentencing trial, prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema they did not possess tapes Moussaoui's lawyers were seeking.

The tapes at issue in that letter are not the same ones that were destroyed by the CIA in 2005 and prosecutors assured the judge that they were not related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or the Moussaoui case.

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the CIA's videotapes, which showed interrogations of Zubaydah and another top al-Qaida leader. They were destroyed, in part, to protect the identities of the government questioners at a time the Justice Department was debating whether the tactics used during the interrogations — which are believed to have included waterboarding — were illegal.

In a written response to the December letter, Moussaoui's attorneys asked the appeals judges to send the case back to the lower federal court that "is in the best position to determine what actually happened and its relevance."

"The timing is important here," Moussaoui attorneys Justin S. Antonipillai and Barbara Hartung wrote in their Dec. 26 response. "The fact that any prosecutor in the same office knew about the existence and destruction of these tapes is surely important evidence."

The appeals court recently rejected the attorneys' request to return the case to the lower court.

Beginning in 2003, attorneys for Moussaoui began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help them show he wasn't a part of the 9/11 attacks. Brinkema on Nov. 3, 2005, asked for confirmation of whether the government "has video or audio tapes of these interrogations" and then named specific ones.

Eleven days later, the government denied it had video or audio tapes of those specific interrogations.

Despite the lapse in disclosure, the government maintains that none of the interrogations related directly to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or the Moussaoui case.

Prosecutors also say the issue is moot since a jury failed to impose the death penalty in the case.

Dawn Nelson sued Unity Hospital and Dr. Steven Berestka, claiming the doctor removed "the most erogenous tissue" after the boy was born on Jan. 21, 2000 — without consulting either parent. Nelson and the boy's father, David Nelson, were unhappy with the result.

But the Appeals Court noted in its Tuesday decision that the mother indicated on a prenatal form that the baby should be circumcised.

Attorney Zenas Baer, who is representing the mother and son, said he was disappointed with the court ruling.

He said federal regulations say there has to be a signed informed consent form before any surgery — and he argued that a checked-off box on a form regarding circumcision is beside the point, saying "isn't the mom allowed to change her mind?"

Baer said his client plans to appeal.

Dawn Nelson initially sued the doctor, alleging assault and battery and negligence. That claim was settled separately. The claims against Unity Hospital and its parent company, Allina Health System, went forward.

Nelson claimed the hospital had a duty to verify that the doctor obtained informed consent and she claimed the hospital had been deceptive or misleading in its informed consent policy.

A Hennepin County judge disagreed and dismissed the case. The appellate court affirmed the lower court decision.

As for the child, another surgeon "performed a revision for cosmetic purposes" shortly after the initial circumcision, the ruling said.

Mark Whitmore, an Allina attorney, said the company was pleased with the ruling.

According to Baer's Web site, he "contributes substantial amounts of time to ending the barbaric practice of routine infant male circumcision worldwide, insuring genital integrity for all citizens of the world."

The Free Press sued the city in Wayne County Circuit Court to obtain the confidential agreements, which city lawyers insisted did not exist.

Colombo rejected city arguments that some of the documents are private and exempt from disclosure under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, saying, "Nothing could be further from the truth."

The judge gave the city until 8:30 a.m. Friday to decide whether to appeal his decision. He urged the city to release the documents immediately.

Sharon McPhail, general counsel of the mayor's office, released a statement saying the office disagreed with Colombo's ruling and would immediately appeal.

"The documents in question were never introduced into evidence during the lawsuit or trial, were never part of the evidence the jury considered during the trial and many of the documents have never been in the City's possession," the statement said.

Also Tuesday, the Detroit City Council authorized the city auditor general to investigate the finances and operation of the mayor's office and law department.

The moves came two weeks after the Free Press reported it had obtained nearly 14,000 text messages sent between Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty on her city-issued pager in 2002 and 2003.

The messages showed that Kilpatrick and Beatty lied under oath at the whistle-blower trial in August when they denied that they had been involved romantically. The messages also showed that they tried to fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown.

The Free Press report set off a chain of events, including demands for Kilpatrick and Beatty to resign, a perjury investigation by Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy and a public apology from the mayor. Beatty turned in her resignation last week; it takes effect Friday.

The Free Press first requested the secret agreements in October, shortly after the mayor announced that he had settled lawsuits filed by Brown and former mayoral bodyguards Harold Nelthrope and Walter Harris, who said they were fired or forced to resign after raising questions about the conduct of the mayor's security staff.

The officers said they were forced out to prevent them from learning about the mayor's relationship with Beatty.

Colombo said all of the documents will be made public unless the city wins an appeal.