Proctorio Dismisses All Claims Against Critic Ian Linkletter, Lawsuit Now Closed (linkletter.org)

After more than five years of litigation, Proctorio has dropped all claims against critic Ian Linkletter via a Consent Dismissal Order filed November 12, 2025. The CDO ends the lawsuit that began with an ex parte injunction in 2020; no money changed hands and the dismissal is mutual rather than an admission of liability. The 2022 injunction’s framework remains in place only to bar access to Proctorio’s internal Help Center and Academy (and materials that aren’t from public sources), but Linkletter is explicitly free to access, copy, share, and comment on any material obtained from public sources. He says this does not impede his criticism and that the key evidence of Proctorio’s harms is publicly accessible. This outcome matters to the AI/ML community because it underlines both the legal risks critics and researchers face when challenging surveillance and automated-proctoring systems, and the protections available for public-interest critique. Technical concerns raised during the dispute — including Proctorio’s eye-tracking and behavior-flagging content (videos titled Abnormal Eye Movement, Abnormal Head Movement, Behaviour Flags, Display Room Scan, etc.) and the company’s apparent willingness to host allegedly “confidential” material on YouTube — spotlight privacy, dataset handling, and ableist bias in student-surveillance models. The litigation also revealed aggressive discovery tactics (requests for “any and all” communications about Proctorio), which could chill research and disclosure; the dismissal restores broad rights to criticize and analyze public-facing artifacts of surveillance tech while leaving internal, non-public materials protected.