CONTACTS MADE on social networking sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook while at work may actually be the property of your employer, according to a recent decision by London’s high court.
The news will come as a relief to employers but should concern people who regularly use their work PC to build up their personal or professional network.
The case in question involved Mark Ions, a former employee of the recruitment consultancy Hays, who left to establish his own rival venture Exclusive Human Resources (EHR). Ions allegedly uploaded a contacts database that was the property of Hays. He then contacted any clients that were on LinkedIn and asked them to become personal contacts. He did this before he left his employer to run his own firm.
The court ruled that Ions should hand over all contacts and e-mail sent or received from his LinkedIn account while it was being accessed from the Hays corporate network. He was not ordered to hand over all his contacts as his former employer had sought.
LinkedIn has about 23 million users worldwide and has become extremely popular with recruiters.
In his defence Ions said Hays had encouraged him to use the social networking site which is popular among business professionals and which last week received a $53 million (€34 million) venture capital investment, valuing the company at $1 billion. He said that once the contacts accepted his invitation to be part of his network they ceased to be confidential to his employer.
“The decision, in an ongoing case over ownership of client contacts, demonstrates once again the difficulty employers have in managing employee use of sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Bebo,” said barrister Joseph Dalby.
While the decision was made in a foreign jurisdiction Dalby said it was likely to be “persuasive” if Irish courts were considering a similar case. Although there is plenty of legal precedent relating to cases where employees left companies and took a list of contacts with them this is the first time such a case has been taken relating to social networking sites.
“The court in London has . . . come to a conclusion that is utterly reasonable,” said Dalby. “Any employer in Ireland could make the same point.”
The decision in the high court was part of the pre-discovery process in advance of a full trial. Yesterday Ions’s LinkedIn profile was displaying just two connections in his network.
