According to MarketWatch, Intel may have lost some email with respect to an ongoing litigation regarding an antitrust lawsuit with AMD. The story in itself isn't really all that interesting. What caught my eye were the plethora of failed communication and user training anecdotes. Here are few great snippets from the article:

Intel said a "fail-safe plan" to prepare back-up tapes missed some employees, while some workers didn't properly follow document retention policies. It further admitted some workers weren't given timely notice to retain materials.

In other cases, Intel said some employees may not have moved all the e-mails to their hard drives, while a few employees thought the company's information technology department was automatically saving their e-mails.

He said Intel is taking steps to correct the problems, including implementing a new email archiving system using software from EMC Inc., among other measures.

I'm no SOX expert, but I do know a thing or two about data retention policies. Isn't there a SOX requirement regarding data retention with respect to contracts and financial documents including email? It's my experience that companies affected by data retention policies in regards to regulatory compliance, generally install a technical means to automatically retain all data BEFORE going public. There seems to be a larger problem if your retention policy relies on employees copying data from their mailbox to their hard drive. Exactly how long has Intel been public?
Maybe someone who has first hand knowledge with respect to data retention of email and SOX could help shed some light?