Cautionary Tales from the BYOD Craze
The following is a guest post submitted by Bill Callahan, a business consultant from Calgary.
Few crazes have swept through the business world like that of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Gartner business analysts predict that by 2017, every other business will require employees to bring their own mobile devices to work in order to connect to company networks, download proprietary information and retain contact capabilities with fellow workers. This trend can provide strong morale and increased productivity, but comes with a cost. When an employee owns their own device, do they also own the intellectual property contained within the device?
Privacy On Platforms
There’s plenty of cynicism about the government and digital privacy, especially since a ruling in the Federal Trade Commission states that employee emails are wholly owned by employers and can be used or searched without exception. An ePolicy report noted that 25 percent of all employers surveyed reported firing an employee for violating email policy. BYOD further complicates the nature of personal compared to professional information. If an employee sends an email regarding intellectual property from their own platform using a third-party email system (like Gmail), they cannot be held liable and the company cannot recover the email or its contents. As such, a company with a BYOD policy must mandate that all work-related emails go through the company email platform, lest they lose ownership rights of its contents.
Security Of IP
One of the BYOD fundamentals that must be drilled into an employee’s head involves the need for security. By leaving their devices unmonitored, an employee creates the risk of a potential thief snapping up a company document, contract, or database of important information. The Asis Foundation reports that the proprietary information loss from theft costs a company nearly $700,000 per incident. By encouraging safety and security on a BYOD platform, including backups for data and remote wiping capabilities, a company can use mobile platforms like BlackBerry with a much lower risk of security breaches and lost resources. These BlackBerry platforms work across different brands and operating systems, incorporating all mobiles into the company security net.
Get It On Paper
The main reason that a company loses (or fails to profit from) intellectual property thanks to employee BYOD involves the failure of the company to commit details on ownership in employee contracts. Without intellectual property ownership clauses in contracts, a company may have to hand over its most valuable ideas, prototypes, and strategies to the employee who dreamed them up on his or her mobile. Employment attorney Clayton Utz notes that this scenario happens often: a factory worker developed the plan for improved modular water tanks and, with a lacklustre contract without information regarding IP ownership; the employer could do nothing to retain the patent for the idea.
Overseas Ventures
A final cautionary tale of the BYOD craze involves the risks of overseas intellectual property. While American laws protect the employer, foreign entities (most notably the EU) have safeguards that protect an individual’s email and data contents, regardless of whether or not the individual in question uses a company email platform. If a hypothetical employee sends or receives emails overseas, the legality becomes even murkier, with no finite answers about who owns the content.
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