Brown & Michaels

Linking Policy

Please read this linking policy before you send an e-mail asking us to link to your site:

We will accept requests to link to sites which meet the following criteria:

Websites with content which is related to our practice area - that is, sites which provide substantive information relating to one or more aspects of Intellectual Property (Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Trade Secrets). Please note that a website which just solicits customers for services is not considered to be "providing substantive information".
Websites with content which is complementary to ours - that is, sites which provide additional information and viewpoints which will supplement the information we provide on our site and help our readers understand the subject matter better.
Other US law firms' sites, but only if the website fits the rules, above. Obviously, there is little point in our firm linking to a competitor's site which serves no purpose other than to offer the same services that we do.
Sites which provide historical information about a topic other than patents, trademarks and copyrights, but only if we feel that the topic somehow supplements the material on our website.

That is to say, we will accept requests to link to these sorts of sites - we do not guarantee to provide a link. Linking from our site is entirely at the discretion of Brown & Michaels PC.

We will generally not accept requests to link to the following types of sites:

Sites promoting "property", wherever located: Please note that our site deals with intellectual property, not real property. We do not link to pages promoting condos in Arizona, or anything like that.
Legal sites for other topics than Intellectual Property: We're sure that some of the visitors to our site might from time to time need to get divorces, or recompense from the Victims Fund in the UK, or to apply for a Green Card, or whatever else it is you're doing, but there are lots of good search engines and sites devoted to those other forms of law. If your site doesn't provide content on some aspect of Intellectual Property, don't bother to try to argue why it's a good idea for us to link to your site. We won't do it.
Law firms in other countries: We have no way to evaluate the services of foreign law firms if we do not work with them, and providing a link here would imply an endorsement with which we are not comfortable. Therefore, as a general rule we do not link to websites for firms in other countries, unless we have a working relationship with them, or unless the website provides significant content related to the provisions of intellectual property law in the firm's country.
- If you are a law firm outside the US, we recommend that you make sure you are listed at the international patent attorney listings on the Piperpat website maintained by the Pipers patent law firm in New Zealand. That's where we go when one of our clients needs an attorney in another country.
- If your site is, like ours, more of a reference on the aspects of Patent, Trademark or Copyright Law in your country than an advertisement for your service, we might accept a link request.
Translators, draftsmen, legal outsourcing companies and other patent services sites: We do not usually link to patent services companies (i.e. draftsmen, translators, etc.) unless we have used their services. Such a link would imply an endorsement which we are not comfortable providing, if we are not familiar with the company.
"Link Farms": We never, under any circumstances, link to "link farms" - that is, sites which serve no purpose other than to link to other sites. Such sites exist only to generate "click-through" advertising revenue for their owners. If I look at your site, and it's just a jumble of unrelated and disorganized links to here and there, with a left-hand column listing "patents in Uruguay, patent leather shoes, colonial land patents", etc, I won't even bother to reply to your e-mail.
SEO sites - please don't bother to e-mail us, asking us to link to your site for the purpose of increasing both of our numbers of incoming links. Don't bother to e-mail if you are working for a company asking everyone under the sun to link to your clients' sites, otherwise known as "Search Engine Optimization", either. We understand the argument that this will fool search engines into raising both of our rankings, but we don't agree with the technique or the premise. We consider such sites and meaningless cross-links to be essentially the same as link farms. We will not add such links to our site nor will we accept or reply to such requests, so save your time.

If you believe that your site fits these standards, feel free to contact us. However, you should realize that we receive dozens of requests each month from people asking us to link our site to theirs. In most cases, we decline to do so. Please do not take offense or be insulted if we refuse to grant your request for a link. It's not a reflection on you - our site serves a very specific purpose of providing information on Intellectual Property for our clients and prospective clients, and it is not a general web directory or link site.

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Brown & Michaels, PC

e-mail: bpm@bpmlegal.com

400 M & T Bank Building
118 North Tioga Street - The Commons
Ithaca, NY 14850
Phone: (607) 256-2000 · Fax: (607) 256-3628