Mike,

I see this as a typical "let's try it (the clause) and see how it flies" strategy by a company.

In my opinion, in the general case, people simply don't read the agreements in details and, for those that do, the majority would shrug this off as 'doesn't impact me because I won't be publishing benchmarks anyway'.

Including "product reviews" seems a bit unusual given that companies usually go to great effort to get reviewers to 'notice' their products. Maybe the clause actually refers to product reviews that include benchmark information.?.?.?
But this is a double-edged sword. After all, when a company decides to ENFORCE the clause (as regards the benchmark results) then they suggest strongly that there may be things about their product that they do not want exposed. I know that such news usually makes me think harder about such a product.

Given the history of product reviewing, including benchmarking, I can't see this holding up in a court. VBut then it still takes someone willing to challenge it to get such a ruling. With ever escalating costs for such actions, this could be a problem in the future, if not already.

Cheers


>Thanks again to the UT news (Evan, I presume?) for posting this one:
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>http://news.com.com/2100-1023-832221.html?tag=cd_mh
>
>"The suit, which focuses on antivirus and firewall software sold by the company's McAfee subsidiary, centers on a "censorship clause" included in documentation presented to customers who download software from McAfee's Web site or use certain versions of package software. The clause says customers cannot publish product reviews or results of benchmark tests without permission from the company."
>
>I seem to remember talk about this a while ago with the SQL Server license.
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>http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/136/IWD010417opfoster/
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>". As Cringely readers are already aware, Microsoft recently prevented an independent lab from publishing benchmark results by using a term in the SQL Server license that says the user "may not disclose the results of any benchmark test ... without Microsoft's prior written approval" to threaten the lab with legal action."
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>There are industry wide precedents about to be set here. That could be interesting.
>
>FWIW, I have mixed feelings at the moment. To me, the reviews and benchmarks shouldn't be banned in a license agreement, however, my intial prediction on the final decision is a half and half, the reviews will fall under free speech but the benchmarks will still be under the license.