All Criticism of This Website Is Hereby Forbidden

Found on Consumer Law & Policy Blog on Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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Inventor-link purports to prohibit visitors to the site from using the company's name, linking to the site, or even "refer[ring]" to it without permission. Although the enforceability of these terms is extremely dubious, the company is nevertheless invoking them in an attempt to stop criticism of the company that appears on InventorEd.org, a website that provides information about invention promotion businesses and scams.

Inventor-link is represented by Dozier Internet Law -- the same law firm that threatened to sue for copyright infringement if one of its demand letters were posted on the Internet.

The firm's "User Agreement" prohibits linking to its website, using the firm's name "in any manner" without permission (the license specifically provides that even clients cannot say they are represented by the firm without asking), or making "any copies of any part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us." These terms would appear to prevent even criticizing the terms themselves, as this post does, by linking to and quoting from them. And, very strangely, the terms prohibit even looking at the website's HTML code.

Wow, talk about control freaks. Anyway, their HTML source isn't interesting at all; some ugly Javascript and dubious meta tag misuse (they even failed to add their keywords), clicked together in GoLive. Additionally, source validation fails with 58 erros on their privacy policy page. That isn't code I really wantr to look at.