Who owns your online networking contacts‏?

In an initial judgment released this week, Mr Justice Richards of the Chancery Division of the High Court held that, under certain circumstances, the LinkedIn contacts of a former employee could be the company’s confidential data.

Hays v Ions was an application by Hays to force its former employee to disclose contacts on his LinkedIn account (as well as other things pertaining to his new business, Exclusive Human Resources Ltd). Hays successfully obtained an order to disclose “emails sent to or received by [Mr Ions'] LinkedIn account from the [Hays] computer network” as well as timesheets, invoices and other documents showing business made from these contacts, but failed in its request to see EHR’s complete candidate and client database. Hays will presumably use this information to consider whether there is a potential claim against Mark Ions in due course.

For many of us, the idea that our employer could ‘own’ our contacts on LinkedIn or Facebook is unthinkable. It's our profile, right? Our education, and current and previous employers? And a mix of our personal friends, previous colleagues, and other professionals we have dealt with in some way?  The issue in this case is the contacts themselves, and the process of uploading them to the site (done automatically by a tool on LinkedIn and Facebook).

Whilst I do have some sympathy with both parties, the proposition that an employee must delete all contacts added as a result of that employment seems strange to say the least. The idea with networking sites is that each person has a profile that builds up their whole life, not just one company. The obvious implication I can see is that the former employer, applying the same logic, could insist that a more personal relationship must cease when an employee resigns, on the grounds that the two people met during a business capacity only.

However, the internet has given every person a platform to share their opinions and thoughts to a wide audience, and even photos taken inside an office and uploaded to Facebook could be seen to constitute a breach of the employer's confidentiality requirements. It could also be said that many users have an overriding objective to increase their number of friends, or ‘connections’, on these websites, and so they add or accept people whom they wouldn’t dream of inviting round to a family barbecue. But that’s 21st century life all round. It's all about the numbers – quantity, statistics, sizes and money – and I’m not talking accounting.

Comments

[Cheap Computers Canada]

Internet has given ample opportunity to people to express their ideas and thoughts through blogging and commenting .

[Ben Morris]

If you use your company email address and computers to network online then my view would be that your company can and should have a claim on the fruits of your labours.

This is an excellent example of the way in which corporate life is adjusting to a new medium and defining the boundaries of its use.

The widespread introduction of email to offices ten years ago involved a similar process. Many people wrongly regarded work email as a) private and b) somehow less "important" than written communication. Neither was the case, but it took a number of high-profile casualties for a more widespread appreciation of these facts to develop.

[Nick]

Surely Hays has a point though? If the content was uploaded from the Hays office, therefore via their system it was almost certainly taken from their database. It's just another example of a company needing to manage employees' use of social networking sites. If you don't want to get into trouble save it for your home computer!