Case law: employee's contacts list may be 'company property'

Businesses need to make sure that their employees cannot take a business contacts list with them if they leave to go to a new job, even if they brought part of the list with them when they joined.

In a recent High Court case, an employee had built up a substantial list of contacts during his employment, including a number of contacts that he had brought with him from a previous job. When he left the company, to work for another business operating in the same field, he took the contacts list with him. The copy of the contacts list that was left on the employee's computer was deleted by the company as part of its clean-up of redundant computer equipment, with no copy being kept.

The company claimed that it owned the contacts list, and so the employee was required to return it (and all other company property) on leaving the company, as required by his contract. The court agreed, finding that the contacts list belonged solely to the company (and not jointly with the employee), as it had been created and maintained on the company's computer system in the course of the employee's employment.

The court reached this conclusion despite acknowledging that the employee had brought a number of the contacts from his previous job, and that he would have been entitled to retain details of personal contacts on the list (as opposed to the whole list), if he had phrased his request in that way.

This case acts as a reminder to businesses to ensure that they have clear policies on email usage and the ownership of information created and maintained in the course of employment.

Immediate