U.S. Defense giant Raytheon has filed suit against 21 anonymous online chatters it believes are employees who divulged trade secrets on Yahoo! discussion boards.
The company is also seeking an injunction forcing Yahoo to identify the individuals in order to determine whether they are in fact Raytheon employees, Raytheon spokeswoman Toni Simonetti said.
The case could further test the extent to which Internet sites are held liable for the material they publish.
The lawsuit was filed not to prevent workers from discussing company matters, but to protect sensitive trade secrets, she said.
"We encourage the free exchange of information among our employees, but the issue here is the disclosure of proprietary financial and business strategy information," Simonetti said. Raytheon has a responsibility to shareholders to protect such data, she said.
Idea exchange encouraged
A Yahoo! spokeswoman said the company will identify the chatters if ordered to do so by the court, and added that past court rulings have concluded Yahoo! cannot be held legally responsible for content posted on its message boards by chatters.
A disclaimer on the site tells users that Yahoo! can't guarantee information posted on its message boards is true, and bars users from posting harassing, defamatory or libelous information, or data that otherwise violates the law.
The lawsuit alleges that the 21 people, who went by online aliases such as "RSCDeepthroat," (presumably a reference to Raytheon subsidiary Raytheon Systems) broke the law by divulging company secrets in 29 separate Yahoo discussion board postings.
The messages, several of which Raytheon claims were erroneous, dealt with the company's financial health, pending business deals, and confidential employee data, according to the suit.
Trade secrets clause
The suit claims the workers violated employee agreements not to disclose confidential data, charging them with "misappropriation of trade secrets." The messages were posted between March 1998 and January of this year.
Raytheon is also seeking an injunction against the unnamed chatters barring them from further disclosure of company information, along with compensatory damages, attorney's fees and other expenses.
