Fisherman Beats Theft-of-Trade-Secrets Conviction Involving Hack

A tech savvy grouper fisherman from Mobile, Ala., saw his theft-of-trade-secrets conviction vacated Wednesday, at least temporarily, when the Eleventh Circuit said venue wasn’t proper in the federal district court in which he was tried.

Timothy Smith hacked into the computers of StrikeLines, a business that sells the coordinates of artificial fishing reefs. Smith stole reef coordinates and them offered them to other anglers on Facebook.

Smith told one of the owners of StrikeLines that he would take the Facebook posts down if they gave him the coordinates for deep grouper fishing.

Smith was charged with violating the Computer Fraud ...