A lawsuit filed in New York may put the cat among the pigeons. New York State is suing antivirus software maker Network Associates, which is most noted for its highly successful McAfee software.

The suit is seeking to do away with the company's ban on benchmarks and product reviews. To be specific, when users download Network Associates' trial software, the following clauses appear in the licence agreement:

1. The customer shall not disclose the results of any benchmark test to any third party without Network Associates' prior written approval.

2. The customer will not publish reviews of the product without prior consent from Network Associates.

The lawsuit alleges that these restrictive covenants are illegal and harm the public by censoring product flaws and defects, and infringing free speech and fair use rights under copyright law.

It is also alleged that Network Associates demanded a retraction for a negative review published in Network World, citing the clause prohibiting product reviews.

So are Network Associates the only perpetrators of this attempt to clamp the mouths of users? Actually, no. You can find lots of companies that have an affection for this particular clause. Here's how:

Go to Google.com and do a search for the following 'disclose results' or 'disclose the results' and 'benchmark test' or 'benchmark tests'. What you will see is hundreds of entries. You will find that many of the entries take you to a Microsoft or Oracle site, or to one of their partner sites.

You will also find a number of small software companies which have inserted this clause into their licence agreement, many of which have perhaps copied it from Microsoft or Oracle.

Network Associates differs from these companies only by virtue of the fact that it has added the nuance of restricting customers from publishing product reviews. This is a strange additional restriction, since the publishing of product reviews is a good deal of what software marketing is all about.

The company is putting a brave face on the whole matter for the moment, claiming that it has modified the language used in its licences, and muttering about reviewers using outdated versions and wrong benchmarks.

Presumably 'wrong' means unfavourable and that the only authorities capable of coming to an impartial judgement about this are Network Associates or organisations that produce favourable benchmarks or reviews.

This posture would not reek so badly if Network Associates did not publish favourable 'independent' benchmarks. But of course they do, as do other companies that use this particular get-out-of-jail-free clause.

We are amazed that neither the automobile industry, which is very benchmark and review sensitive, nor any other industry we know of finds it necessary to implement such creative legal gagging devices. From the perspective of the IT consumer it is indefensible.

Thus, we invite all readers to submit details of licences they have seen or signed that contain such a clause, naming the vendor and the product. We will keep a list going and applaud vendors that remove the offensive clause from their licences retrospectively.