Office of the Ombuds

Gartner published research is copyrighted material. The Gartner Copyright and Quote Policy exists to protect this material when referenced in the public domain. We don’t allow indiscriminate, unauthorized distribution of research, and we also do our best to prevent anyone from misrepresenting or misusing Gartner opinions by taking them out of context. For example, we don’t allow vendors to say, “Gartner says we’re number one!” And we don’t let them disparage their competition by saying, “Gartner says they’re going out of business!” Most vendors respect our copyright and external use policies, as they wouldn’t appreciate companies abusing their intellectual property.
 
Riverbed Technologies has ignored multiple requests to respect our policy and our intellectual property by allowing their sales associates to distribute a Gartner published report in its entirety on more than one occasion, and by quoting excerpts from the same report to disparage their competition. Despite our repeated requests to stop, Riverbed continues to violate our external-use policies.
 
So what? We’re naming names to let everyone know that we do actively monitor use of our research, and will not ignore the unauthorized use of our name and redistribution of documents.