Apple Wants To Take Sapphire Glass Maker GT Advanced To Court In Secret

Apple Inc. seeks to go to court over its failed relationship with sapphire glass manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies Inc. entirely in secret. If its motion to seal the case passes, it would ensure legal protection of various business processes and research and development methods.

Shortly after its Chapter 11 filing on Oct. 6, GT Advanced sought court permission to wind down its sapphire production plants in Mesa, Arizona, and Salem, Massachusetts. New Hampshire state government objected to the closings, as it would leave 890 people unemployed.

The New Hampshire attorney general's office reasons that a company should certainly be able to protect its trade secrets, but to keep every single detail of the business relationship between Apple and GT Advanced "goes much too far." Given that GT Advanced was telling investors of progress in August, the state says it's unclear how the company should have gone bankrupt so quickly.

“The public interest in learning what transpired where [GT Advanced] made such confident statements publicly very recently, while clearly a catastrophic storm was on the horizon is very high,” wrote Peter C.L. Roth, senior assistant attorney general for the state of New Hampshire.