“Apple has sold enterprise-class storage hardware and software for years, but the company has yet to embrace systematic email and document retention policies that are common among publicly traded companies,” Jordan Golson reports for The Industry Standard.
“According to a recent legal filing (see page 7) in the Psystar vs Apple antitrust case, Apple employees are responsible for maintaining their own documents such as emails, memos, and voicemails. In other words, there is no company-wide policy for archiving, saving, or deleting these documents,” Golson reports.
“This could pose a problem in the event of a lawsuit. In recent years, companies have been fined millions after failing to retrieve old emails and other files required as evidence. The fear of fines and other legal sanctions has resulted in many companies instituting strict “e-discovery” retention policies, and has helped give rise to a new class of enterprise-class storage and indexing tools,” Golson reports.
Golson reports, “However, Apple claims in the Psystar document that its policy is fine because once the company anticipated litigation: [Apple] identified a group of employees who could potentially have documents relevant to the issues reasonably evident in this action. Apple then provided those individuals with a document retention notice which included a request for the retention of any relevant documents.“
Golson reports, “Psystar’s antitrust claim has been dismissed, but Apple is currently involved in many other cases. Apple’s weak e-discovery practices could very well come back to haunt the company.”
Full article here.
