I received a message in my inbox from Staples, Inc., asking me to review a product I buy fairly frequently. I went ahead and filled out the review form and wrote a two-word review and then clicked “publish”, but an error message came up to tell me I needed to agree to the user agreement. So I clicked on the user agreement (with a company called PowerReviews) to see if I would agree to it and found this passage:
“By transmitting product or service ratings or reviews (collectively, “Reviews”) to the Review Service, you hereby (a) irrevocably assign and transfer to PowerReviews all of your rights, title and interest, on a worldwide basis, including, without limitation, all intellectual property rights and moral rights, in and to such Reviews; (b) to the extent the preceding assignment and transfer is ineffective, grant PowerReviews an exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual and fully sublicensable and transferable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, distribute, publish, create derivative works from and publicly display such Reviews throughout the universe in any media…”
So you’re telling me I can’t publish my review on Venus, because it’s now owned by PowerReviews? I’m probably violating their intellectual property by publishing part of the user agreement. So sue me.
Katherine (aka Kathy) says:
I agree with you Donald. That is a load of crap indeed.
6 May 2012, 23:16