Corporate employee blogs: Lawsuits waiting to happen?

A recent libel lawsuit filed against Cisco Systems over one of its employees' personal blogs could spur companies, many of which have encouraged workers to share their writings publicly, to reconsider how much latitude to give them.

Thousands of companies have embraced the idea of giving employees an unfiltered voice as a means to keep in touch with customers, suppliers, and the media. Sun Microsystems boasts a 4,000-employee-strong blog network, including its chief executive, and some corporate "spokesbloggers" like Microsoft's Robert Scoble have even rocketed to Internet stardom.

Cisco's legal trouble stems from a Blogspot-hosted blog called Patent Troll Tracker, which Rick Frenkel, who directs the company's intellectual property department, launched last May. His posts focused on patents and patent litigation--an issue that Cisco has pressed Congress to address by overhauling what it views as a broken U.S. patent system.

A few weeks ago, Frenkel revealed his identity, and two patent attorneys in Texas filed suit, accusing him of tarnishing their good names and disparaging a patent case their client had filed against Cisco--all the while allegedly concealing his affiliation with the company.

Cisco has responded by rethinking how it does blogging. Now the Patent Troll Tracker posts appear to be open only to invited readers. Although the company says it's standing by Frenkel and allowing him to continue his personal blog, the incident also highlighted a number of important "lessons," Cisco said in a statement--including the potential perils of unchecked anonymous blogging.

Cisco said it still believes "common sense" should be a guiding force for employees sharing information online, but it also added the following rule to its three-year-old Internet postings policy: "If you comment on any aspect of the company's business or any policy issue the company is involved in where you have responsibility for Cisco's engagement, you must clearly identify yourself as a Cisco employee in your postings or blog site(s) and include a disclaimer that the views are your own and not those of Cisco."

Although it wasn't a surprising move, it also may discourage other employees, said Denise Howell, an intellectual property and technology lawyer based in Newport Beach, Calif., who has written about corporate blogging policies.

"It helps show what expectations are for the company," she said, "but it's telling everyone else, 'Gee, we think you're just as big a risk as this guy.'"

Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Google, Dell weigh in
To be sure, it's still the exception, not the rule, for companies to have rules governing blogging in the first place. But among those who do, not all of them make it absolutely mandatory to disclose one's corporate affiliation.

Sun Microsystems, which hosts blogs from CEO Jonathan Schwartz and some 4,000 other employees, has had a blogging policy in place since 2004. It broadly prohibits discussing a wealth of "non-public" information, including financial data, code, personal information about other individuals, all manner of confidential information, and "work-related legal proceedings or controversies." (Click for PDF)

But unlike Cisco, Sun doesn't require bloggers to disclose that they work for the company, although Tim Bray, the company's Web technologies director, says he considers doing so "good practice."

Google similarly recommends, but does not require, such disclosures, said spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger. (Google said it has an internal "communications" policy but doesn't make it public, although its general employee code of conduct is.)

Yahoo is arguably even gentler, but its policy has "been successful in providing employees with guidance on blogging practices with respect to the company," said spokeswoman Nicki Dugan. Its guidelines, issued in 2005 (PDF), decree two main rules: don't reveal proprietary information, and be cautious about posting exaggerations, obscenities, or other characterizations that could invite litigation.

Under a separate list of not-mandatory guidelines, Yahoo employees who choose to identify themselves as employees of the company are told to consider telling their supervisors, but they're not required to do so, nor are they required to disclose that they work for Yahoo at all.

"If you're worried about what your mom, manager, ex-coworker, or Terry Semel would think, listen to that instinct," Jeremy Zawodny, one of Yahoo's best-known employee bloggers, wrote in a May 2005 blog post introducing the policy.

The BBC's blogging guidance actually carves out "blogs or Web sites which do not identify the blogger as a BBC employee, do not discuss the BBC, and are purely about personal matters" from its guidance.

"If someone is a fisherman and they want to talk about fly fishing outside of work, then that's not our business, it's personal. But if someone is going to talk about notebooks...they have to say they're from Dell."

--Bob Pearson, Dell vice president

Dell's stance is perhaps the most similar to--and predates--Cisco's. Bob Pearson, the computer maker's vice president of communities and conversations, said the company prides itself on being one of the first companies to release a "clear transparency policy."

That "online communication policy," released in November 2006, sets standards for employees when they're acting as "a delegate of the company."

Specifically, they're expected to disclose their association with Dell whenever they do any sort of blogging, social networking, Wikipedia entry-editing, or other online activities related to or on behalf of the company. If the subject matter crosses over into hobbies or people's personal lives, "there would be no rationale for us to get involved in that," Pearson said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Translation: "If someone is a fisherman and they want to talk about fly fishing outside of work, then that's not our business, it's personal," said Pearson. "But if someone is going to talk about notebooks and anything related to Dell, they have to say they're from Dell."

IBM also requires its employees to identify themselves and their roles with the company if they're blogging about company-related topics. Its lengthy guidelines began through a wiki process in spring 2005 and have been evolving since then.

Other companies were less forthcoming about what rules, if any, they have in place.

Apple and Symantec spokespeople declined to comment on whether they have employee-blogging policies and what they entail. An Adobe spokeswoman said the company "does have an active blogging community and asks those participating to adhere to Adobe's blogging guidelines," but she declined to share those rules. A McAfee representative said the company is in the process of "refreshing" its blogging guidelines--for undisclosed reasons unrelated to the Cisco incident--but declined to share any details about what's in place now.

Microsoft offers employees a list of frequently asked questions about how to apply existing company policies on confidentiality and other matters to the blogging world, but it doesn't make that public, a spokeswoman said. The gist of the guidance, though, is to be smart and use common sense, she said.

Any company that decides to adopt blogging policies should keep them short, clear, and to-the-point, said Howell, the online communications lawyer.

"I don't think you need to necessarily try to take into account every single specific situation that might come up in your blogging policy," she said. "You'll come up with something that's unreadable and draconian. No one will actually read it or respect it."

[aintnorainbowdorothy]

Blogs and Lawsuits

I work for myself doing some consulting with local government entities and quite a bit with various national and international companys. I use common sense when I blog. I don't talk about my work, simply having a blog where I post random thoughts and feelings. Too many bloggers in companys talk about their work and not themselves. When they do and don't identify themselves as an employee of said company, they do both themself and their employer a complete diservice. It just really comes down to using a little common sense. If it feels like you're giving away company information then don't do it.

[ralfthedog]

Controlling company contact with the public.

If you are not an official spokesman for a company, do not represent yourself as being from that company. If I were Dell, I would be far more concerned about some guy in housekeeping trash talking my strategic partners, slandering my competitors, then identifying themselves as working for Dell.

Even if the current post is not inflammatory (Notebook batteries need to get better), the post the week before could have been (Marmot baiting for fun and profit). The blogger identifies himself in the second post, but retroactively damages his companies reputation with the first.

Official spokesmen should identify the company they work for. Non official spokesmen should not use any company resources to blog.


Disclaimer: I am senior management with http://andrewsschool.com. I generally do not identify my self as working for The Andrews School because we are a language driven company and I am profoundly dyslexic (My spelling and grammar bite the big pickle.)

[dryicezero]

Blog Intent

It all depends on the intent of the blog. I publish a blog at: http://www.smbtechadvice.com and give free advice and information along with other tidbits to anyone who is interested in tech stuff. I do not post on behalf of my clients or contract employers. Although some of the information I post may be gleaned from some work I did for a company, I do not name these companies. If a blog is published with the intent of identifying a company, employee, or otherwise entangled with a company, then the same legal review is needed as a public press release.

[inachu]

I take this with a grain of salt.

Just as long as NDA are being kept then there should not be any problem.

[jdzions]

Scoble isn't at Microsoft anymore

Robert Scoble left Microsoft quite a while ago.

[jessicaclark101]

Cisco's Wiki

Cisco Launches a support wiki. I wonder how this is going to play into things.

http://supportwiki.cisco.com

[Yaaawwnnn]

How to remove Internet based defamation and online libel
My how to is not yet complete, but I will post a completed paper soon. I am looking for other how-toers to help me with my paper.
I am currently researching the evolution of internet based defamation and online libel and its financial, emotional and commercial impact. I am also studying the world?s legal systems attempts to keep up with the internet explosion as it pertains to freedom of speech.
I will appreciate if lawyers, free speech enthusiasts and technology people who have valid comments contact me with their thoughts. Also, please send me links to any good reference material that you know of.
Based on my research, ?winners? in court are far and few between. But online slander, libel & defamation is obviously a significant problem. These guys make a living out of getting online libel removed with out-of-court solutions, but they also assist attorneys in investigations: www.rexxfield.com . They do pro bono for victims that can?t get work due to libel.
Seeking case studies:
? Please help me if you know of real life examples of the following:
? Suicides or attempted suicide due to online libel or internet defamation
? Bankruptcy due to online defamation or internet based libel
? Divorce due to online libel or internet defamation
? Termination of employment due to online defamation or web based libel
? Physical assaults due to online libel or internet defamation
? Successful litigation against online libel or internet defamation activities
If there is someone else undertaking a similar study wishing to collaborate, I?d love to hear from you. The internet is a big place, there is much to sift through.
Thank you very much,
Yasmin
yaaawnn [at] gmail [d0t] com (that is G M A I L in case it doesn?t appear )
Keyw0rds only:
? Internet libel
? Online libel
? Web based libel
? Internet defamation
? Online defamation
? Web based defamation
? Internet slander
? Online slander
? Web based slander

[www-rexxfield-com]

Many of these discussions focus on the legal ramifications of alleged online defamation. Whereas, I would be very encouraged to see discussions on virtuous corporate leadership, and prudent moral decisions made with respect to blogging guidelines, as well as retraction practices. It drives me nuts to see cases where there has been obvious wrongdoing, although often ignorantly or as a result of bad information. Notwithstanding, the authors and/or their employers for the most part do not admit such wrongdoing for fear of litigation. Whereas, I believe that in many cases if apologies were was issued and a retraction published, the victims would be satisfied and vindicated.

This response is not by any means suggesting that Cisco or a staff member has committed libel. I am not privy to the details and not particularly interested, I just felt compelled to pull out my soapbox to speak generally on the topic. Although I make a living out of helping victims of Internetlibel, I would much prefer to lobby myself out of a job with the implementation of common sense Congressional reform to existing laws, or failing that, a community response to implement reasonable mediation and moderation guidelines for ISPs and blog administrators with respect to dealings with alleged libel.

Regards, Michael Roberts of www.Rexxfield.com