The long battle between Apple and the rumour sites community started two years ago with the "Asteroid" case and took end this week with rumour sites at the winners' side.

In 2004, two rumour sites, AppleInsider and PowerPage published detailed reports on a not released yet music related Apple product, code-named "Asteroid". A few months later, in early 2005, Apple sued the two sites for breaking trade-secrets related US laws.

This week, the Santa Clara County Court, ruled that Apple was in fault, and that it would have to pay $700 000 to those rumour sites. The amount includes lawyer charges as well as charges and loss related to the subpoenas granted to Apple. It actually corresponds to a 2.2 multiple of the charges. Apple has already lost in appeal a few months ago but now the ruling is definitive.

The two sites found help at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which provided them with legal advising over the case. EFF's Attorney Kurt Opsahl commented on the ruling:

"Bloggers break the news, just like journalists do. They must be able to promise confidentiality in order to maintain the free flow of information. Without legal protection, informants will refuse to talk to reporters, diminishing the power of the open press that is the cornerstone of a free society."

Apple also sued ThinkSecret in 2005 but there is no decision yet regarding this case. During the same year, Apple has sent several cease and desist letters to Mac-centric sites (including us) and threatened those who shared copies of Mac OS X betas.

As far as we're concerned, we believe it's really good news for the Mac community. It's definitely reassuring for us and our sources to know that we're as free as famous publications are, to publish the information we obtain from our contributing sources, without taking risks for ourselves and esposing these sources to legal pursuits.