  A formulation of "Ne\v{c}iporuk's lower bound method" slightly more inclusive
than the usual complexity-measure-specific formulation is presented. Using this
general formulation, limitations to lower bounds achievable by the method are
obtained for several computation models, such as branching programs and Boolean
formulas having access to a sublinear number of nondeterministic bits. In
particular, it is shown that any lower bound achievable by the method of
Ne\v{c}iporuk for the size of nondeterministic and parity branching programs is
at most $O(n^{3/2}/\log n)$.
