Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Short and simply, no.

That depens on the terms of the sale. If he signed any sort of non-compete (which is very common in the sale of a company) then it is most likely prohibited in the terms of the sale.

I would ask him to see the purchase agreement and let him know that you don't want to open your company up to any civil liability by violating the terms of the sale.

Let me make sure I understand.

Mr. Jones used to own ABC Corp., which had an email list.

Mr. Jones sold ABC Corp.

Mr. Jones now works for XYZ Corp. Mr. Jones would like to take the email list that he developed while the owner of ABC Corp. and use it for marketing purposes at XYZ Corp., his new employer.

Correct?

From a legal standpoint, he may not even "own" the email addresses any more. If he sold all of the company's assets, including its intellectual property, then he is not even the rightful owner of these email addresses any longer. Just because he has them does not mean he "owns" them.

If the new owners of the company he sold were to find out about this, I'd wager they would have grounds for a lawsuit.

Even if he somehow does "own" the email addresses, I still do not think it would be ethical for him to use those email addresses for the new company, the sole reason being that the people behind those email addresses have zero relationship with the new company. They are not customers, and they are not opted-in prospects.

Now you might say, "Well, these people know him, and certainly there wouldn't be anything wrong with him emailing them to say that he's at a new job and wouldn't they like to stay in touch, etc. and so on..." This all sets aside the possibility of a no-compete agreement, which even if it existed, may have burned off by now.

And you'd certainly have a point with that. We all take our Rolodexes with us when we go from job to job, legal exclusions aside.

For me, however, this use just doesn't pass the sniff test. Looking forward to what others think here.

- Paul

I agree with Paul. Even if he does own the email addresses, the prospects/customers need to opt in to your new email list. The only case I could see for this being acceptable is if the guy owns the addresses AND the customers/prospects indicated in their mailing preferences that they are willing to receive emails from third parties. (But I'm not a lawyer...)

Umm....NO!

Unless he owned the company. You might want to consider that he would be willing to do the same when he leaves YOUR company.

Michael

In a word, no.

1) the people on that list have not given permission to be contacted by the new company

2) if you email them, they are likely to consider it spam

3) the list is so old, it's probably useless anyway

4) does the guy even have "rights" to it?

A much better option is to build a new list with a signup form, ads in appropriate e-newsletters, seo, sem, etc.