On October 20, 2015, a Ninth Circuit panel consisting of Chief Judge Sidney Thomas and Judges M. Margaret McKeown and Stephen Reinhardt heard oral argument from the U.S. Department of Justice and counsel for David Nosal on Nosal’s criminal conviction arising under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). In 2013, Nosal was found to have violated the CFAA by allegedly conspiring to obtain access to company information belonging to his former employer, executive search firm Korn Ferry, through the borrowing of another employee’s login password. He was also convicted of trade secret misappropriation under the Economic Espionage Act. The panel focused most of its questions around one main point of contention between the parties: the interpretation of the “without authorization” language appearing throughout Section (a) of the CFAA. Such a focus makes sense given that the interpretation of this short phrase could completely change…
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