As a result, anyone who copies contact details held on work computers or mobile devices and takes them to a rival firm is now breaking the Island’s copyright laws.
However, business contacts held solely on social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook are likely to belong to workers unless the employee has signed rights over to their employer.
With a proliferation nowadays of mobile devices and people working at home, it is difficult for companies to stop data being copied by employees.
The key ruling came in a dispute involving two local recruitment consultancies specialising in finding staff for the marine and seismic surveys sector, Nautech Services Ltd and CSS Ltd.
In April last year Nautech obtained interim injunctions preventing three former employees who moved to CSS from using both confidential information and data that was subject to copyright. Believing that the injunctions in place were being breached, Nautech took action.
But the ex-employees and CSS argued that the names and email addresses of contractors stored in Nautach’s Microsoft Outlook contacts were not confidential because the contractors can be easily contacted by a variety of other means, including social media, advertisements and online job forums. They argued that as the information was easy to obtain, it could not be confidential.
However, the court rejected this. It found that the contacts database was at the heart of Nautech’s business and that there was no publicly available ‘directory’.
Dr Elena Moran, of law firm Collas Crill, said that the finding was important because it showed that if an employer collects relevant contact details, even if the individual details are publicly or easily available, the collection will still be confidential.
She said that it would therefore be unlawful for an employee to copy contacts and take them to a new employer.
‘This is positive news for businesses because it highlights that even if work contacts are copied to a mobile device owned by the employee, those contacts still belong to the employer and should not be copied or used without authority,’ she said.
Dr Moran, who represented Nautech, said: ‘This case should be a warning to all employers to ensure that they put in place an agreement with the employee that all rights to the LinkedIn account are assigned to the employer and that the employee has no right to take the contact information with them when they leave.’
