Google privileges

[Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com>]

See attached if you are curious about a failure to properly use the
attorney-client privilege.

 

/Larry

 

RE: Google privileges

[Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com>]

> Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> > See attached if you are curious about a failure to properly use the
> > attorney-client privilege.

Ben Laurie responded: 
> I wasn't, but I'm now curious what you think they should've done
> instead.


I didn't mean to imply that they should have done anything different. The
first question one asks when confronted with a demand to license patented
technology is "Can we design around it?" That's what this attorney wanted to
know! [1]

I know and respect the Google attorney named in this dispute. In my opinion,
he did everything right and he should be proud of how he handled the
situation. It is not his fault that email systems keep lots of extra copies
and drafts, and that it is the nature of technical disputes that lots of
technical issues get widely discussed when patents intrude.

There are some lessons for us, however. We in Apache have ourselves made
claims of attorney client privilege on certain matters. After reading this
decision, I am even less convinced that we should rely on attorney-client
privilege and attorney work product protection for our own technical
discussions. The kinds of strictures that the judge described as necessary
are almost useless in a world-wide, open source, public benefit software
foundation like Apache. We should avoid saying things in writing that we may
have a difficult time explaining away later in court, but don't rely on
difficult legal doctrines to keep our conversations private. Assume that
anything we say can be used against us.

/Larry

[1] This decision was originally sent to me by another attorney with the
subject line: "Google boo-boo". I changed the subject line before I
forwarded the email to this list, because I don't think Google boo-boo'd at
all.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: benlaurie@gmail.com [mailto:benlaurie@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Ben
> Laurie
> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 2:40 AM
> To: legal-discuss@apache.org
> Subject: Re: Google privileges
> 
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:31 AM, Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com>
> wrote:
> > See attached if you are curious about a failure to properly use the
> > attorney-client privilege.
> 
> I wasn't, but I'm now curious what you think they should've done
> instead.
> 
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Re: Google privileges

[Ben Laurie <be...@links.org>]

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:31 AM, Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> See attached if you are curious about a failure to properly use the
> attorney-client privilege.

I wasn't, but I'm now curious what you think they should've done instead.

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