We honor no-publicity clauses
Today, a caller asked me why Keybridge doesn’t have a web page listing the many Fortune 500 companies we’ve worked with over the years. After all, most of our competitors have such a page, usually displaying the corporate logos of major clients.
Perhaps our competitors have obtained permission to display the trademarks of major companies on their websites. Certainly, we’ve obtained such permission from time to time. However, most of our larger clients require us to sign some type of Service Agreement that contains a clause along these lines:
“Neither party shall use the name of the other party in any publicity, advertising or announcement without the consenting party’s prior written approval. Prior approval from [client] shall be obtained in writing from [client].”
Now I’m no lawyer. Perhaps it’s perfectly legal to create a web page naming all one’s clients without obtaining permission to do so. But it seems clear to me that this would run contrary to the spirit of the contracts we’ve signed. We strive to honor those agreements. And that’s why we don’t have a client webpage displaying the logos of 50 Fortune 500 companies.
