Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission is planning to review Apple's disclosures about Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs’s health problems to ensure investors weren’t misled.
Bloomberg adds that the SEC investigation doesn't mean investigators have seen any wrongdoing.
To bring any case, the SEC would probably have to show the company tried to benefit by withholding information about an unambiguous diagnosis, said Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor and SEC lawyer who now teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.
"It would be difficult, and certainly a new area of the law," Henning said. "You would have to pin down exactly what they knew, and with a health issue -- unlike a merger or a decline in revenue -- it’s not subject to definitive answers."
"The company has used him and made him a public figure to increase the value of Apple," said John Dienhart, who holds the Frank Shrontz Chair for Professional Ethics at Seattle University. "If you take the good from that, then you have to take the bad."