ObDisclaimer: OffTopic.
On Mar 31, 2004, at 06:43, Steve Thomas wrote:
> In some types of businesses (the legal world is one, I believe), the
> law requires that the company retain a copy of certain types of
> communications[1]. It may *seem* invasive and paranoid, but there
> could be legitimate reasons a company would need to do this.
>
> [1] In the U.S. I have no idea of what is or isn't required elsewhere.
This is simply not true, at least as far as e-mail is concerned.
However, US law does require that, in the event that you are served
with a subpoena, you hand over all requested materials in existence at
that point, and that you not make any attempts to destroy it.
I just attended an IP training class in the company that I work for.
One of the things I learned was that our lawyers routinely delete
nearly all mail they receive, so as not to create future problems in
the event of lawsuits where these are requested. (In fact, our legal
team tends to prefer communication via telephone over e-mail).
In fact, our company has also established a retention policy for
e-mail, the essense of which is that potentially sensitive mails should
not be archived.
One example which they used to justify this habit was to imagine a
scenario where a scientist or engineer sends an e-mail to one of our
lawyers, suggesting or asking that we may be violating someone else's
patent. Even if it turns out we are not (based on the lawyers'
understanding of the scope of said patent, and/or licensing
agreements), the record established by the e-mail could be exploited
out-of-context by another party in a future lawsuit; and if it happened
to be a trial by jury, such internal communications would often weigh
heavier than actual findings of fact by legal professionals. (Trials
by jury are, by their very nature, very indiscriminate and "random" in
terms of outcome -- since lay persons composing a jury tend to have
limited ability to follow very complex/involved/technical discussions).
They feel it would be better that the outcome of such a trial would
rest on technical and legal merits alone, and not be subject to the
type of speculation and rumor mongering that may often be present in
"informal" communications such as e-mail.
-tor
