Re: silly legal boilerplate, was Regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures

[Michael Dillon <[e-mail]>]

> 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.

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