BlackBerry CEO John Chen put his foot down today, telling leakers that if they don't stop revealing the company's secrets, he will be forced to take legal action against them. Leakers of device specifications, pre-release images and other trade secrets are known for inciting as much excitement for the products they feature as they take away from the launch events for those products.
Chen isn't having it anymore. In his blog post, Chen accused leakers of lying and impersonating high-level officials in order to gain access to secret information from BlackBerry. He went so far as to say that the company would take legal action against leakers if necessary.
"One of the most frustrating things for all of us at BlackBerry is when a critical and confidential project is reported in the media before we are ready to discuss it," Chen wrote. "Leaks are, at their best, distracting, and at their worst downright misleading to our stakeholders. The business implications of a leak are seldom advantageous."
Chen said that although he understands that BlackBerry's fans are very enthusiastic about the company's new products, he would rather they express that joy and anticipation in other ways. He warned that future leakers should think twice before targeting BlackBerry because the company is now fighting back.
"[We] are pursuing legal action against a party who stole confidential information about a future BlackBerry product and made that information public," Chen wrote. "This person falsely posed as an employee of one of our carrier partners to obtain access to secured networks."
Chen told BlackBerry fans that if they must leak information, they should do it out of love for the company and not use illegal or malicious techniques to access top-secret information.
"There are a lot of people whose enthusiasm for our company and our products makes them want to know what we will do next - and that can be a tremendous asset for us as a brand," Chen wrote. "But, when curiosity turns to criminality, we must take strong action."
Neither Chen nor BlackBerry commented on the name of the leaker who will soon be prosecuted, nor did the company state what information the leaker obtained. However, it is obvious that this leaker went too far, at least in BlackBerry's eyes.
