Subject: Regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures

From: "Andrew Allen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:11:26 -0500

With regard to the recent discussion on the IETF-Discussion list
regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures, I understand the community's
concerns regarding the timeliness of the disclosure.  As I'm sure
everyone can understand, as employees of companies we are bound by
confidentiality obligations and, in addition, cannot always control our
company's internal processes.  The community's concerns have been
brought to the attention of my employer and they are in the process of
evaluating the concerns.  My company has asked for your patience while
they take the time to evaluate the concerns and determine if there is an
appropriate course of action in this matter to alleviate the concerns of
the community.

Your understanding is appreciated

Best regards

Andrew Allen

Manager Standards

Research In Motion Ltd

Office +1 847-793-0861 x20824

BlackBerry Mobile +1 847 809 8636

http://www.rim.com/ <http://www.rim.com/> 

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From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:41:59 -0800

Hi -

> From: "Andrew Allen" <[email-masked]>
> To: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 6:11 PM
> Subject: Regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures
...
> This transmission (including any attachments) may contain confidential
> information, privileged material (including material protected by the
> solicitor-client or other applicable privileges), or constitute non-public
> information. Any use of this information by anyone other than the intended
> recipient is prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error,
> please immediately reply to the sender and delete this information
> from your system. Use, dissemination, distribution, or reproduction
> of this transmission by unintended recipients is not authorized and
> may be unlawful.
...

This is just plain silly.  Or is it willful ignorance of the "Note Well" terms?

Randy

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:22:37 -0800

Randy,

It is a standard footer attached automatically by many attorney's email systems 
to all outgoing mail.

d/

Randy Presuhn wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
> 

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Nov 2009 05:36:18 -0000

>It is a standard footer attached automatically by many attorney's
>email systems to all outgoing mail.

Many non-attorneys' mail, too, as in this case.

Yes, it's silly: as far as I can tell, confidentiality claims like
this are entirely unenforcable in the US except in a few arcane
situations that only apply to messages from one attorney to another.
It's just another example of pseudo-legal nonsense running amok.

But I have often been sorely tempted to return messages like this with
boilerplate of my own explaining that since I cannot accept the
sender's alleged restrictions, the message has been returned unread,
and since I have no way to evaluate the sender's status relative to
the party applying the notice, disclaimers in a message saying to
ignore the boilerplate won't help.

R's,
John

---

From: Eran Hammer-Lahav <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:38:56 -0700

Is every single RIM employee going to send this to the list?

EHL

From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Andrew Allen
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 6:11 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures

With regard to the recent discussion on the IETF-Discussion list regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures, I understand the community's concerns regarding the timeliness of the disclosure.  As I'm sure everyone can understand, as employees of companies we are bound by confidentiality obligations and, in addition, cannot always control our company's internal processes.  The community's concerns have been brought to the attention of my employer and they are in the process of evaluating the concerns.  My company has asked for your patience while they take the time to evaluate the concerns and determine if there is an appropriate course of action in this matter to alleviate the concerns of the community.

Best regards

Andrew Allen

Manager Standards

Research In Motion Ltd

http://www.rim.com/

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:39:15 +0200

FYI: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg02914.html

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:05:17 -0500

Unfortunately, many corporate email systems, including at a former
employer of mine, automatically add these to every outgoing email, and
individual employees have no control over it nor any way to change the
corporate policy. Which is one of the reasons why I use non-work email
for my IETF work.

Cheers,
Andy

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:08:59 -0500

Andrew,

In this particular case, the patent was published on Jan. 4, 2007, so
it's difficult to imagine any valid reason to not have disclosed then.

Cheers,
Andy

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Andrew Allen <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>
> With regard to the recent discussion on the IETF-Discussion list regarding
> RIM’s recent IPR disclosures, I understand the community’s concerns
> regarding the timeliness of the disclosure.  As I’m sure everyone can
> understand, as employees of companies we are bound by confidentiality
> obligations and, in addition, cannot always control our company’s internal
> processes.  The community’s concerns have been brought to the attention of
> my employer and they are in the process of evaluating the concerns.  My
> company has asked for your patience while they take the time to evaluate the
> concerns and determine if there is an appropriate course of action in this
> matter to alleviate the concerns of the community.
>
>
>

---

From: "John R. Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Nov 2009 14:21:21 -0500

> corporate policy. Which is one of the reasons why I use non-work email

Oh, yes, we know.  But, of course, if someone's employer insists on doing 
something silly, that's their problem, not ours.

R's,
John

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:15:07 +0700

Date:        20 Nov 2009 05:36:18 -0000
    From:        John Levine <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | But I have often been sorely tempted to return messages like this with
  | boilerplate of my own explaining that since I cannot accept the
  | sender's alleged restrictions, the message has been returned unread,

That's the wrong response, it achieves nothing, the person who sent the
message usually cannot do anything about it.

A better response would be to send the stupid boilerplate (and only the
boilerplate, not the real message, or its headers) to the CEO (or corporate
lawyer, or similar) of the organisation that sent the message, along with text
something like...

	I thank an employee of your organisation for the message sent
	to me.  This note is to inform you that I do not accept, and
	will not cooperate with your organisation's non disclosure
	request (as shown herein).   If you did not intend the information
	contained in the message to become available to the public, your
	organisation should not have sent it to me.   While I respect your
	copyright of the message itself, I will use the information I
	learned from the message to my own advantage, and that of anyone
	else I feel will be able to profit from its contents.   Once again,
	thanks again for supplying me with this valuable information.

and nothing else.

kre

---

From: "John R. Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Nov 2009 10:54:09 -0500

> lawyer, or similar)

You must know different CEOs and lawyers than I do.  The CEO's secretary 
will send it to the lawyer, and the lawyer will say "yes, that's what I 
told them to do", under the well-known principle that a lawyer will always 
recommend any measure, no matter how expensive, to defend against any 
risk, no matter how trivial.*

The only hope of change is if there's enough pushback that the staff 
reports it's making it hard for them to do their jobs.

R's,
John

* - For a good example, see the ever expanding RFC legal boilerplate.

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:54:44 +0700

Date:        23 Nov 2009 10:54:09 -0500
    From:        "John R. Levine" <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | You must know different CEOs and lawyers than I do.  The CEO's secretary 
  | will send it to the lawyer, and the lawyer will say "yes, that's what I 
  | told them to do",

You mean, to give away corporate information to outsiders?  You know
laywers who recommend that - weird...   That's what my message said happened
- note there is no complaint at all about the boilerplate, that's pointless,
just a statement that I am not bound by it (there is no agreement between me
and them) , and that I intend to take full advantage of the information they
sent me - regardless of their admonitions that I must not.

I don't, and won't, tell them what the information was - that's (partly)
why the comment about "respecting copyright" was there - the author of the
message owns its copyright, even when they have sent it to you, you cannot
generally make copies without permission.   That means I cannot send them
their message back again, or not until they have proved to me that they are
the copyright owner of the message, which is probably not so easy to do when
they have no idea what the message was (or who sent it)....

  |  under the well-known principle that a lawyer will always 
  | recommend any measure, no matter how expensive, to defend against any 
  | risk, no matter how trivial.*

Believe me, I fully understand both how that happens, and even why.

kre

---

From: Michael Dillon <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:33:41 +0000

>        thanks again for supplying me with this valuable information.

A far better strategy would be to pick a law journal or other
publication directed at the legal industry, and then send the above in
a letter to the editor, prefixed with a question as to whether anyone
believes that such disclaimers carry any legal weight. Choose a
publication that is in the same legal jurisdiction as the company
whose email messages carry the disclaimer.

If enough people do that, eventually a few of these letters to the
editor will get published, and the whole thing will get more
discussion within the legal industry.

I suppose it would also work to choose prominent newspapers that are
typically read by lawyers, in the USA, New York Times or Washington
Post, in the UK, The Times, or The Guardian, in Australia, the Sydney
Morning Herald.

--Michael Dillon