High Court orders pre-action disclosure where confidential information was migrated to social-networking site

The High Court has ordered pre-action disclosure in relation to a potential claim by Hays Specialist Recruitment (Holdings) Limited that an ex-employee (Mr Ions) had, during the course of his employment, copied and retained confidential information which he used after leaving Hays. Specifically, Hays alleged that Mr Ions had deliberately migrated details of business contacts from Hays' confidential database to his personal account at LinkedIn, an online business-oriented social-networking website, by uploading those contacts so that LinkedIn could invite the contacts by e-mail to join his network. Mr Ions argued that the migration was carried out with Hays' consent (since it had encouraged him to join LinkedIn) and that, once the business contact had accepted the invitation, the information ceased to be confidential as it could be seen by all Mr Ions' contacts. The High Court held that Hays had reasonable grounds for considering that it might have a claim, and ordered pre-action disclosure of certain documents. This case is an interesting example of how social-networking websites can be used to transfer confidential information and the importance of employers addressing these issues.

Case: Hays Specialist Recruitment (Holdings) Limited and Another v Ions and Another [2008] EWHC 745.