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Re: silly legal boilerplate, was Regarding RIM's recent IPR disclosures

2009-11-23 10:54:34
 | But I have often been sorely tempted to return messages like this with
 | boilerplate of my own explaining that since I cannot accept the
 | sender's alleged restrictions, the message has been returned unread,

That's the wrong response, it achieves nothing, the person who sent the
message usually cannot do anything about it.

A better response would be to send the stupid boilerplate (and only the
boilerplate, not the real message, or its headers) to the CEO (or corporate
lawyer, or similar)

You must know different CEOs and lawyers than I do. The CEO's secretary will send it to the lawyer, and the lawyer will say "yes, that's what I told them to do", under the well-known principle that a lawyer will always recommend any measure, no matter how expensive, to defend against any risk, no matter how trivial.*

The only hope of change is if there's enough pushback that the staff reports it's making it hard for them to do their jobs.

R's,
John

* - For a good example, see the ever expanding RFC legal boilerplate.
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