Who Owns my Email?
Do you own emails that you send at work? Or does it belong to the corporate, as proprietary information? Is it legal to make personal backups of email from work?
In this age of jealously guarded intellectual property rights, these questions are not out of place. All technology companies requires that employees sign a proprietary information agreement. But what does it cover? What information is covered? Does it cover emails and private correspondences? It is well understood that physical documents should not remain in the possession of someone who is no longer employed - what about the soft documents?
Some of the cautious say yes, it covers all forms of correspondence delivered through corporate networks. They never back up their files, relying completely on the corporate IT infrastructure to provide adequate storage.
A brief search on the Internet brings me to the US Economic Espionage Act 1996, which enacted laws that prosecutes those who knowingly steal trade secrets for economic gain or to benefit a foreign entity. It makes such misappropriation a crime, which carries heavier weight than a mere breach of contract. Serious indeed!