Welcome back, After a short break the past week, we are back with another issue of Law4Startups. Our goal here is to provide startup founders with updates on legal cases and new laws that can impact their businesses. Our newsletters will continue to be sent twice a week on Thursday and Sunday.
We also have 60+ free legal templates; you can click here for our free legal templates. I hope we can support you all as you continue growing your businesses. Onwards and upwards, Liam | | | Corporate Email vs Confidentiality | Background We are all aware of Elon Musk's recent acquisition of Twitter. One significant side issue in the case against Musk, which forced him to complete the sale, was how confidentiality applies when using a corporate email.
Musk was looking to purchase Twitter as an individual. Still, many communications were made from his Tesla and SpaceX email accounts which Twitter claimed were not covered by confidentiality as Tesla and SpaceX were not parties to the transaction.
| The Law In this case, the court ruled that whether communications made on a company email or otherwise stored on a company server (so a Slack conversation or a conversation on a corporate app) are confidential depends on the level of confidentiality the employee or user expects from their company. This issue was resolved by looking at Tesla and SpaceX's email privacy policies to see if the company or others could access Musk's company email accounts and if that information would reasonably have been disclosed to others by being shared using the company email. | | | The future is here. Don't get left in the past. | Today's world belongs to the STEM fields, and those who ignore that will be left behind. Fortunately, Brilliant helps you stay ahead of the curve. That's because Brilliant is all about learning interactively, which has been proven to be the best way to master new concepts. With thousands of hands-on lessons, Brilliant helps you understand everything from foundational math to data science, machine learning, and beyond in as little as 15 minutes a day. Each lesson is bite-sized and engaging—and you can try them all for free. Join 10M+ others and start learning for the future today. | | | Takeaways This may seem like a random post, as many of us are startup founders who own our own companies, but this is important for other applications. Suppose you are currently working while starting your company and use your company email to communicate about your startup. In that case, this may be a breach of confidentiality to your startup, which can prevent you from patenting a new invention or even give your company a claim to the IP of your business, depending on their policies. In short, you should always be using an email server you have control over, and you should do your best to consider whether it is appropriate to use a specific server when communicating in the early days of your business, where many founders blur the line between personal and business accounts. | | | In addition to our newsletter, we offer 60+ free legal templates for UK, Canada and US companies. These include employment contracts, investment agreements and more. | This newsletter (or any other content provided by Law4Startups) is not legal, financial, or tax advice. We are simply providing legal information and collating news from around the world. We recommend that you consult an attorney before making any legal decisions. We do not make any representations and take no responsibility for your actions based on this information. | | |
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