[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

[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.

[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).