Slashdot Mirror
Who Owns Your Online Networking Contacts?
Ben Morris writes "A recent judgement in the UK courts has forced a former employee to hand over details of his business contacts built up through LinkedIn.com while he was employed by his former company. The decision is one of the first in the UK to show the tension between businesses encouraging their employees to use social networking websites, and trying to claim that the contacts should remain confidential when they leave."
Hays alleged that the employee used his LinkedIn network to approach clients for his own rival agency, which he set up a few weeks before leaving them.
If he registered his work e-mail and promoted that as his main contact, then yes, he was using Linkedin in the course of performing his job and his employer is entitled to those contacts. However, I would also expect that whether or not there's confidentiality involved would depend upon if there was an NDA in force when he was hired.
If you make contacts, you keep 'em unless it's something profoundly related to your company (e.g. the guy in shared services who'll push your capital requests).
Otherwise those are your contacts. You bet your ass the sales guys turn around and pitch your customers in their next gig. Why should it be any different for IT?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Apparently some other members of the company had been contacted by recruiters and they started going through email and found some emails in violation of the non-compete clause. They then solidified their case through the former employee's LinkedIn contacts. The guy ended up settling out of court and they drilled him financially.
After finding that out, I went through my LinkedIn contacts and removed ALL the recruiters on there I didn't know on a personal level. I then contacted the recruiters remaining on my list and asked them to contact me before sending any InMail to any of my LinkedIn contacts.
After RTFA, it appears as if the bloke in question set up his linkdin several weeks prior to him leaving. Of a more interesting nature, in my mind, is, at what point does an employer here in the States 'own' your contacts? Think about it. You've been on a site like the one mentioned in the article for lets say 5 years. You accept a position at a new company. Over the course of your 2 years being employed there, you add lets say 5 contacts. You then accept another position at another company, perhaps because you received a better job offer through this service. Can the comapny you are now leaving sue you in the US and obtain all of your contacts, even those prior to when you joined?
Another question is, are you now in the position of having to list out any and all personal and professional contacts you have on various internet sites as a part of your disclosure when filling out your paperwork for a new company? Sort of like having to list patents, websites and other works you might already have prior to working somehwere?
Time will tell I guess. this case seems pretty straightforward based on the limited article...but it sure will muddy up quick.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class" Oscar Wilde
Is a tricky question.
The real question is, though, how does it impact on your and your former employer's life? A contact isn't some sort of IP. There's a person or a company on the other end of the address, phone number or mail address. How will they react to a company that browbeats you into handing over your, partly private, address book?
If anything I'd send a mail to my contacts and tell them in no uncertain terms what my former employer did. Would you want to do business with a company where you have to watch constantly for backstabbing? I don't know if I'd really enjoy that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I am now convinced anything online - is not property; IP or not. It is simply "out there".
Laws and such will (mostly) favor those with powerful lawyers and the financial ability to control that "property".
I have recently begun to contribute to a short story site. I consider all of that material "gone" and even though we have a license on the work - I don't expect it to be ever enforceable.
And before you claim banking websites and owning that - information to funds over the Internet is simply a reflection of a "real world" property.
...where they have decent employment and privacy laws this would never be allowed.
Oh. Wait...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Contacts can sometimes be worth an incredible amount of money. This is absolutely true when you're talking about a business that relies on doing contract work.
Then read the EULA including the mice type.
And yes, I do read EULA and I usually ignore it and I'll live with the consequences - including /.'s - which means they'll ban my account (gasp!) and my IP (double gasp!!) oh God! What do I do?!?! Oh wait ... you guys know.
By the way, all of you are closet Windows users and want to be the next Bill Gates! :-P
of course, they'll have to wade through several dozen pron^H^H^H^Hart websites, as well as half a dozen casino^H^H^H^H^H^Hpractical mathematics websites - not to mention /., UF, YouTube . . . oh, never mind - they can just get it all from the network guys. What, you didn't keep a record of my network activity while I worked for you? Boy, it just sucks to be you today, don't it? I sure don't remember all the people I've had contact with lately, I was counting on you guys to keep track of that for me.
Us old-timers will recall the glory days of "copyright law doesn't apply to the Internet" and "Libel and slander laws don't apply on the Internet." Tee hee - we were soooo NaÃve.
Of course a list of contacts developed while in someone's employ belongs to the company. That has been the law in just about every jurisdiction for decades. Just because that list is on the shiny new Intarweb doesn't change anything.
As with blog posts, comments, YouTube, and Facebook, the onus is on you to keep a clear line between work developed information and personal information, and to think these things through well in advance.
And to realize that trying to poach you employer's clients will almost always get you in trouble.
Three Squirrels
That's "naive" since slashdot seemed to not like the proper spelling I pasted in...
Three Squirrels
To all you worker drones out there:
To all you bosses out there:
Contacting said contacts to give them what might be construed as negative information about your prior employer could indeed convince them to do business elsewhere, raising the spectre of competitive activity (even if you don't profit directly). If company xyz is able to take your former employer's contacts because you published their dirty laundry, you could end up liable even if xyz never compensates you for their good fortune. In a civil court, it would place you in the position of proving that xyz didn't compensate you for your actions, an incredibly difficult proposition (remember: in civil court, the standard is a preponderance of evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt).
just how many of those "business contacts" will suddenly find themselves relegated to "drinking buddies"?
The issue in this case wasn't whether the employee was entitled to keep a copy of the contacts list after leaving employment. The question was whether the employer was.
The employer is probably entitled to the information. But the employee may be entitled to it, too. LinkedIn buddy lists ("networks") aren't a big secret. Arguably, they're not entitled to protection as a trade secret. Absent an non-compete agreement (illegal in California), the employee and the employer both probably have the right to a copy of the information.
It really all boils down to what you can get away with. As was mentioned previously, hair stylists will tend to take their customers with them when they go to a new salon. This is also common when talking about stock brokers and investment advisers, "taking their book with them." Very competent car salesmen will also walk with their clients. I would have no compunction switching vendors when a salesman changes jobs if the business is such that I know he has a very strong influence in the quality of service I receive.
At the same time, business owners tend to think of these customers as "theirs" and use any number of anti-competitive ruses to crush their employees. I worked at a midrange shop where the boss hosed one of his sales reps on a deal: he gave the guy a figure to offer for a deal and the rep had no latitude to change the offer, it being the boss' money and all. When the customer hemmed and hawed over it, the boss called them back and offered a better price, then put the sale on his board, not the other rep's! The rep walked, naturally, and a better case of killing a goose that laid golden eggs could not be found. The guy tried taking his book with him and the boss pulled out the non-compete signed many moons ago. They wasted a lot of money in court and the judge eventually decided against him.
A very common and legal scam in service-related industries is the lawn service con. When someone buys a lawn service, they're not buying the equipment so much as the customer base. The equipment costs are negligible compared to the effort of gathering all those customers in the first place. Ah, but what does the wily lawnmower man do? After he sells his business, he contacts all of his customers and lets them know he's going to be doing business as a different name. Those customers, happy with his service, will switch companies and the new owner of the old company will find himself with no work. Anyone buying a service business like this must must must stipulate a non-compete in the contract.
There's no right or wrong in this kind of dispute, there's only what you can get away with and what you can be nailed with in court.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
If you're going to get a job with another entity: person, corporation, not-for-profit, don't do it without your own protective clauses. Maybe I'm lucky that as a contractor, I can submit my expectations within the bid documents, but I don't see any reason why a W2 employee can't and shouldn't put their expectations into the work agreement.
If you do something on behalf of your customer (in this case, your employer), expect the customer to want rights to it. Designing a website, creating a marketing list, etc, may be easily acknowledged by others as "theirs" even if you spent the time doing it. They did pay you for that time, correct?
If you disagree with the verdict here, just put it into your work contract. I do.
Hi: Just wondering. /Can I post the paint huffer dude?
According to the article and numerous posts in http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/08/1335253/, California is the only U.S. State with a law prohibiting contractual obligations that prevent you from working in your field.
So what set of States were you referring to when you said "most States have laws that prohibit" that?
...but I chown them and then I pwn them.
Advice: on VPS providers
How exactly does one "hand over" an electronic record that can be freely copied?
What are they going to do, tell all his contacts to no longer talk to him if he calls?
Using systems owned by your "soon to be former" employer to set up your business is not very smart. It never hurts to cultivate relationships amongst your work related contacts, however do it on your own time. Manage your contacts at home on your own system as this eliminates any chance that something will be found on your old work system or in the e-mail logs. Figure out ways to strike up away for the office friendships with the contacts your are most interested. It takes time and forethought, but there are ways to "pilfer" a contact list without raising your employer's suspicions and if done right the boss will even encourage you.
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always, Always, *ALWAYS* use your own system and internet connection, and email accounts, for any communications that are not strictly the business of your employer.
For instance, I have my own laptop with a cellphone aircard in it. My employer actually allows me to bring and use my own laptop at work, while on breaks and during my lunch hour, as long as it's never plugged into the company network, which it never gets plugged into.
Wow...that would get messy. Could they force a divorce?
This makes me think of non-compete clauses that some employees have to agree to before working with a company. Contact with clients is a major asset, so if you leave with clients you're stealing from the company in a way.
"Of a more interesting nature, in my mind, is, at what point does an employer here in the States 'own' your contacts?"
At no point whatsoever. Contacts are just knowledge, and they're not secret knowledge. There is no law that covers their ownership. The reaction I'm reading to this story makes me think that people now believe, a priori, that anything an employer can do to an employee is legal, until the employee has proven otherwise in a court of law.
There is no way this would fucking stand up in the US. I'm amazed it stood up in the UK. And the reason the guy did it is completely irrelevant... didn't any of you see Jerry Maguire?? Salespeople consider their rolodex to be a perk of the job. There's no law being broken in taking your contact information with you when you leave a company. This ruling is bullshit.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
That's it... consider me LinkedOut. :-/
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Keep a duplicate of your business contacts on a separate, private computer. Keep "shill" contacts, such as the plumber, local RadioShack, Fry's, your Mother-In-Law, random 'Big-Industry' email addresses that are easily available from websites, and maybe a few close friends on your site. When you establish contact that you may want to keep secret from your employer as a 'fail-safe' or 'golden parachute' (should you be laid off or decide to switch employers), enter it into your privately-controlled database and delete it from your social networking page, or use a disposable, anaonymous email address for exchange of contact information.
The only copies that you have are privately owned, and not subject to any company controls, as they constitute private information (just like your address books and recipe books at home). If your boss sues you for a list of your contacts, simply hand over the list of shill contacts. You can't perjure yourself, since you can claim that you made the contacts outside the course of business (conversation at the coffee shop/bar/restaurant/telephone call/school/travel/etc.). When your boss supoenas your Social Networking contacts, all he is able to get is a list of your commonly available shill contacts. He can't prove you are keeping a secret list of contacts somewhere else, so you can't get into trouble because nobody can prove a separate list exists.
Law circumvented. Judgement null. Next task, please.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The case isn't about ownership of the contacts. It's about breach of restrictive covenants in his contract of employment. The particular judgment was simply concerned with pre-action disclosure: ie the linkedin contacts are evidence, not the substance of the case.
Judgment in full at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2008/745.html
Sounds like neither of them were smart.
* If the company was smart they'd have set up a role account on LinkedIn, under a fictitious name.
* That would almost certainly be against the LinkedIn terms of service, of course. But then I suspect the whole arrangement was against the LinkedIn TOS to start with, and the smart thing for LinkedIn to do would be to cancel the account (while preserving the information offline for legal purposes, of course).
From the point of view of the employer: If you want to boost your claim that you own stuff like social net contacts, then post lots of notices telling employees that you own it and that they agree. http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/06/employee-imtexte-mailvoicecomputerinter.html --Ben [But if you need legal advice on this, you need to talk to your lawyer.]
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us