[maffydub]

In previous employment (as a software engineer), I've been told to do this too - mainly around inventions we were trying to patent. The reason is slightly less nefarious than you might think - for example, someone might casually say that some aspect of their patent is "obvious" but they're saying that as an expert in their field who may have spent months or years thinking about the problem and alternative solutions. However, if it came to court, "even the inventor said this was obvious" is a pretty hard thing to respond to.

[Jka9rhnDJos]

To provide my own anecdote, refusing to take any feedback except orally was how the Sacklers instructed their sales reps to handle issues and concerns about Oxycontin abuse. It was to avoid having any discoverable evidence that they received reports of abuse and did nothing about it.

[vel0city]

I agree its usually not good to sprinkle legal landmines in your email history, but FWIW the obviousness standard for US patents is someone "skilled in the art", so an expert working in that field finding it obvious is failing the obviousness test.

[idiotsecant]

OK, but you get what parent post is saying. This particular example might have a technical answer but the overall point is that emails tend to lack context and are composed for brevity / convenience.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." - Cardinal Richelieu

[ImPostingOnHN]

it sounded like the overall point was that, by avoiding retained communications, they could get away with something they otherwise would not be able to get away with, and should not be able to get away with (patenting something obvious)

what sort of context could be added which exonerates that behavior?

if the context exonerates it, why not have a policy of including context?

if it's somehow benign, but cited out of context, why not just provide the context?

and, if such exonerating context doesn't exist, wouldn't society prefer they not get away with patenting something obvious?

[OkayPhysicist]

It's a hell of a lot easier to not have to defend a statement made out of context than it is to do so. It's the same reason you should never, ever, under any circumstances answer any questions about anything at all coming from the police without your lawyer. Even if you are completely innocent, your words can be presented in such a manner as to call into question your honesty, at which point your rebuttal will be shrouded by distrust.

The quintessential example is an alibi. If the cops accuse me of shooting someone in SF, but I was in Berkeley at the time, I might be tempted to tell them that. But then, when they produce a faulty eye-witness, who says they saw me in SF that evening, suddenly I need to discredit that witness in order to resolve my alibi. Meanwhile, if I hadn't said anything, the witness's claim that I happened to be in the same city on the same day as the murder is nowhere near enough evidence to cause me any problems.

[ImPostingOnHN]

> If the cops accuse me of shooting someone in SF, but I was in Berkeley at the time, I might be tempted to tell them that. But then, when they produce a faulty eye-witness, who says they saw me in SF that evening, suddenly I need to discredit that witness in order to resolve my alibi.

you have an equal need to disprove the claims of a witness regardless of whether you have an alibi

additionally, regardless of whether there's a witness, all you need to do is prove you were in Berkeley to remove yourself as a suspect

so the two things (alibi, witness) seem orthogonal

[Mawr]

You don't, because the witness testimony is irrelevant on its own. Without knowing the alibi, there's no reason to think the OP being in SF is an issue at all.

See https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?t=1255

[ffhhttt]

I think the context should be pretty obvious to most people in the engineering field.

> why not just provide the context?

Because lawyers might find ways to dismiss/challenge it?

[ImPostingOnHN]

in the example given, the lawyers finding ways to dismiss/challenge it would be a good thing, because the perpetrators in question are trying to patent something obvious, which society has decided we don't want them doing

so, the problem spurring such a policy is that they don't want to be implicated on the record in doing bad things - they want to get away with what society doesn't want them to get away with

that means the policy is bad for society.

[maffydub]

In the actual example, I don't think the engineers were trying to patent something obvious - it's just not unusual for engineers to casually throw around the word "obvious" for things that are not, and it's unwise to have that written down.

(I was the person who provided the ancedote.)

[HumblyTossed]

I don't think these two scenarios are the same.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I agree, and was originally going to downvote the parent comment for the same reason, but then realized I think they were replying to this more general point in the GP's post:

> "Do this only orally" is always to hide evidence from a future court discovery.

That is, I've followed enough court cases and news reports to have seen things taken egregiously out of context to agree there could be valid reasons to limit discoverable communications (though not in Tesla's specific case), especially because so few people seem to argue in good faith anymore. For example, lots of times in long email or slack threads people throw out ideas, even if they're not particularly well thought out, because that's part of what being in an open, healthy organization entails. And then I've seen these communications presented as some sort of official corporate position instead of brainstorming.

[salawat]

Counterpoint:

What you're describing is still fine because a solid defense is to look at someone taking something out of context and going, "would you mind continuing reading?" where someone else follows up shooting down $controversial_thing because liability etc.

The only reason not to create that record in the first place is because you weren't interested in compliance from the get go, and you were banking on the "naive first violation" defense.

Been there, seen it in action, left because of it. Ethical abandonment, no matter how it is gussied up, is ethical abandonment. There is always time for doing what you should to keep your nose clean.

[rasz]

I think it might have been more about how patent law works. There is a precise window defined for revealing invention to filing for it, same for selling something before patenting it (1 year).