Legal threats to prevent company from publishing video reviews

guest · Oct 23, 2020

Palo Alto Networks threatens to sue security startup for comparison review, says it breaks software EULA
October 23, 2020
https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/23/palo_alto_orca_lawsuit/

Palo Alto Networks has threatened a startup with legal action after the smaller biz published a comparison review of one of its products.

Israel-based Orca Security received a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer representing Palo Alto after Orca uploaded a series of online videos reviewing of one of Palo Alto's products and compared it to its own. Orca sees itself as a competitor of Palo Alto Networks (PAN).

“What we expected is that others will also create such materials ... but instead we received a letter from Palo Alto’s lawyers claiming we ware not allowed to do that,” Orca chief exec Avi Shua told The Register this week. “We believe these are empty legal threats.”
In a note on its website, Orca lamented at length the “outrageous” behavior of PAN, as well as posting a copy of the lawyer’s letter for world-plus-dog to read.
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The lawyer’s letter [PDF] claimed Orca violated PAN’s EULA fine-print, something deputy general counsel Melinda Thompson described in her missive as “a clear breach” of terms “prohibiting an end user from disclosing, publishing or otherwise making publicly available any benchmark, performance or comparison tests… run on Palo Alto Networks products, in whole or in part.”

When asked what he thought the outcome of this latest battle would be, Shua said he hoped PAN would “simply remove these clauses from the EULA,” insisting “so many people from the industry” don’t support bans on reviews.

“[...] I’m not going to be bullied into not doing something because someone else has deeper pockets.”
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Orca Security: The Cybersecurity Community Demands Transparency, Not Legal Threats

Abstract: A few weeks ago, Orca Security published a comparison between the Orca Cloud Security Platform and a few other cloud security tools—including a comparison with Palo Alto Networks Prisma. In response, Palo Alto Networks sent a cease and desist letter, demanding the comparison be removed immediately. Here is my response. I urge you to see the videos in question and if you, like me, believe the cybersecurity community deserves transparency and vendors shouldn’t be allowed to prevent publishing reviews or benchmarks via legal threats, then please share this post. You can also leave your own comments down below.
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Rasheed187 · Oct 24, 2020

Not a good look for Palo Alto Networks, what are they afraid of? If the comparison is false or poorly done I can understand. But if not, anyone should be allowed to review your product.

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