Psystar Case Reveals Poor Email Archiving At Apple

Ian Lamont writes "Buried in the court filings of the recently concluded Psystar antitrust suit against Apple is a document that discussed Apple's corporate policy regarding employee email. Apparently, Apple has no company-wide policy for archiving, saving, or deleting email. This could potentially run afoul of e-discovery requirements, which have tripped up other companies that have been unable to produce emails and other electronic files in court. A lawyer quoted in the article (but not involved in the case) called Apple's retention policy 'negligent.' However, the issue did not help Psystar's lawsuit against Apple — a judge dismissed the case earlier this week."

Comments

Re:email is for communication... not documentation

[truesaer]

But that doesn't equate to legal requirements for a company to retain ALL email.

No it doesn't. But there are two issues with email. First is that if you don't have a standard policy for retention/destruction of email (or network share backups or whatever), it opens you up to allegations that you destroyed evidence after a lawsuit was filed. If people can delete things at any time, it makes it hard to show if it was coincidence that your VP just happened to delete all that relevant stuff after a suit was filed or not. With a standard policy, if everyone complies, then this matter is much more cut and dry.

Second is Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. I know a lot of companies have banned external instant messenging because of retention concerns related to Sarbanes-Oxley (since you can't easily log AIM and other IM discussions). I'm a bit surprised that Apple hasn't got policies in place given their issues with improper options in the past. Similar laws, I guess they didn't take the scandal very seriously.

Re:e-dicovery?

[hairyfeet]

Yes but IMHO it should be the same as taxes, that is 7 years. If the excrement hasn't hit the bladed cooling device in that time then chunk away. But if there isn't at least SOME kind of retention policy required of corporations you'll see every Enron style ripoff artist simply switch everything to email so they won't have to worry about having any paper trails. You have to balance the needs of the public and the shareholders with the needs of the company. But since we are rapidly switching(and some could argue we already have) to a paperless society then we really should have a set number of years for electronic records like email and IM. After all, look at what has come out against MSFT over the Vista Capable scam thanks to email.