Troll With 'Stupid Patent' Sues EFF. EFF Sues Them Back (arstechnica.com) 68
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued an Australian company that it previously dubbed as a 'classic patent troll' in a June 2016 blog post entitled: Stupid Patent of the Month: Storage Cabinets on a Computer." An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica:
Last year, that company, Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd. (GEMSA), managed to get an Australian court to order EFF to remove its post -- but EFF did not comply. In January 2017, Pasha Mehr, an attorney representing GEMSA, further demanded that the article be removed and that EFF pay $750,000. EFF still did not comply. The new lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday, asks that the American court declare the Australian ruling unenforceable in the U.S.
GEMSA's attorneys reportedly threatened to have the EFF's post de-indexed from search engine listings -- on the basis of the Australian court order -- so now the EFF "seeks a court order declaring the Australian injunction 'repugnant' to the U.S. Constitution and unenforceable in the United States."
The Register reports that GEMSA has already sued 37 companies, "including big-name tech companies Airbnb, Uber, Netflix, Spotify, and eBay. In each case, GEMSA accused the company's website design of somehow trampling on the GUI patent without permission." But things were different after the EFF's article, according to Courthouse News. "GEMSA said the article made it harder to enforce its patents in the United States, citing its legal opponents' 'reduced interest in pursuing pre-trial settlement negotiations.'"
GEMSA's attorneys reportedly threatened to have the EFF's post de-indexed from search engine listings -- on the basis of the Australian court order -- so now the EFF "seeks a court order declaring the Australian injunction 'repugnant' to the U.S. Constitution and unenforceable in the United States."
The Register reports that GEMSA has already sued 37 companies, "including big-name tech companies Airbnb, Uber, Netflix, Spotify, and eBay. In each case, GEMSA accused the company's website design of somehow trampling on the GUI patent without permission." But things were different after the EFF's article, according to Courthouse News. "GEMSA said the article made it harder to enforce its patents in the United States, citing its legal opponents' 'reduced interest in pursuing pre-trial settlement negotiations.'"
Re: Could you come up with a more biased title? (Score:2)
Re: Could you come up with a more biased title? (Score:5, Funny)
It was a .......Kangaroo court?
I'm so ashamed but I just could not stop myself.
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I wonder what percentage of Australian judicial system workers end up in prison because they hear that joke one too many times, flip out, and murder the person who said it? I'm guessing it's gotta be at least 20%.
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Is it too much to ask for SOME professionalism anymore?
The Australian court found for the plaintiff...
The order doesn't have any effect anyway, unless Australia wants to go to the trouble of firewaling its entire internet.
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Australian Internet is so slow that nobody notices if something is firewalled off. We just figure someone took a backhoe to the local copper again.
Re:Could you come up with a more biased title? (Score:4, Insightful)
The educationally subnormal believe that there are two sides to every situation. We need fair representation of each side of the sides. Someone suggests that gravity makes things fall down and they demand that that the "up gravity party" have equal representation, never even thinking of that the sideways gravity party might be just as worth listening to. In the end however, gravity falls "down" because that's what down means. There is no second opinion we need to listen to.
If the patent is stupid then just say it's stupid. "Professionalism" be damned. Idiots be damned.
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Try and realize the truth, there is no 'down'. And if you don't believe me, just ask an astronaut.
Re: Could you come up with a more biased title? (Score:3)
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Try and realize the truth, there is no 'down'. And if you don't believe me, just ask an astronaut.
"Down" is an attitude, e.g."NASA astronaut Ron Garan sang the blues after learning his return to Earth from the International Space Station could be delayed..."
Re:Could you come up with a more biased title? (Score:5, Informative)
Title seems to be perfectly accurate to me. This is a "non-practicing entity" -- a piece of legal jargon referring to what is known in the vernacular as a "patent troll". This troll is suing EFF because EFF called one of its patents "stupid" -- and in fact the title duly quotes the term "stupid patent". In logic this is called "reification" -- in essence talking about a statement without necessarily accepting or rejecting its content. You may agree with the statement "Alice called Bob a 'bastard'," without asserting that Bob is a bastard yourself.
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There's nothing wrong with holding a portfolio of patents and then licensing them.
As long as the entity can be (counter-)sued in such a way that a loss hurts those responsible for trolling, there's nothing wrong with this in principle.
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Is it too much to ask for SOME professionalism anymore?
The title is perfect because it quotes the original EFF blog post, titled 'Stupid Patent of the Month: Storage Cabinets on a Computer'.
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The EFF brings the laughter (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to love it, "Their article made it harder to enforce ridiculous patents"
He does realize most people's response will be GOOD !
Huh? (Score:2)
The court order wont be enforced in the US - it will be enforced in Australia, by an Australian court, and if the EFF refuse to comply, then the Australian court will issue contempt proceedings, in Australia.
If the court fines the EFF, then that fine can be pursued in the US under separate law, but it probably wont need to be.
And I'm on the EFFs side in this battle, I just think their filing in the SF court is ridiculous and a waste of money, as any court ruling in SF will have utterly no effect on this ord
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Umm, no.
Have you actually read the SPEECH act?
Or even the very first sentence [wikipedia.org] of the wikipedia article on it?
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Traditionally, slashdot users avoid the linked article because it is a clickbait ad, and because they do in fact do lots of research about the same topics on their own. That's what you do, you ignore the story, you ignore the summary, and instead go read about the subject from a reliable source.
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Right, and you do realise that the SPEECH act does not matter to the Australian judicial system, right? If its bounced out of the US, the EFF had better hope it never has any funds or assets in Australia, because they will be seized under contempt of court, and contempt of court rulings aren't covered by the SPEECH act even if the contempt is based on an original case which is, so any fines issued under contempt of court *can* be pursued in US courts against its US assets.
The SPEECH act is not a "get out o
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Bzzzt!!!
We have a loser. Contempt doesn't work that way in Australia, and even if it did, a US court wouldn't separate costs, fees, or fines from the underlying judgment.
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The SPEECH act prevents the enforcement of ANY legal action covered by the SPEECH act.
The EFF isn't going to be paying anything and you should give up the armchair lawyer card because you aren't any good at it.
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But enforcement in the US was the bulk of the nit that was being picked.
The EFF is an organization that is focused on American laws. Australia has its own EFA [efa.org.au].
I suppose that, if they want to be overcautious, any EFF staffers traveling to Australia on EFF business should insure they are taking personal laptops rather than organization-owned ones, but it's really difficult to imagine any enforcement of this particular
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They'd be foolish to try to enforce it because the judge was negligent in determining if he/she had jurisdiction. The court clearly didn't have jurisdiction in this case, it was a US charity posting on a US server to a US audience and too boot the complaint is that it caused US based companies to react. There wasn't a thing in this lawsuit that involved Australia and the judge should have thrown it out for lack of jurisdiction.
But regardless no US court is going to enforce anything related to this as the ca
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You are presuming that they will win their case. I agree that they *should* win their case, but that's a different statement.
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To clarify free speech in Australia is the right to express your 'opinion' and not the right to express false statements of facts not matter what the hell you believe. The EFF is making a serious blunder in saying nayh nyah Australian law does not apply in the US because that would cripple legal process between Australia and the US in both directions. The EFF was required to prove that the stupid patent of the month was a valid claim and an accurate statement of fact or that it was an opinion a line from th
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PS just to make it clear, civil court in Australia is like a poker game, where you can bluff and raise the bet, beyond the ability of the other player to call and they must fold, and pay not only all they have bet but everything you have bet. So seriously dangerous exercise which is why not many bullshit patent claims in Australia (note the patent part if most definitely occurring in the US).
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Actually, no. The EFF is doing just fine. They reason they don't give a shit about what some court rules on the other side of the world is that they don't have a legal reason to give a shit.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
But the SF court case will establish a record that GEMSA will find more difficult to get delisted, even in Australia.
I don't think that it is libellous to report on the SF case. Assuming the EFF wins the case, it would be a factual statement to say (hypothetically) "a court in the USA agreed with the EFF that GEMSA's patent 6,690,400 is stupid".
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Oh hell yes. That's too damn good to pass up.
Re: Huh? (Score:3)
A US court would not issue a declaratory judgment that the patent is stupid. It might issue a declaratory judgment that the EFF has a right, protected by the First Amendment, to say that the patent is stupid, even though an Australian court ruled against the EFF by default.
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Civil forfeiture in most places in Australia only applies to crimes with a commercial aspect or profit motive. This sometimes doesn't mean what people think it means, [sbs.com.au] but nonetheless, in this case, there are no ill-gotten gains to forfeit.
Cancer is treatable (Score:2)
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A surgeon would just cut the cancer out and follow up with chemo and radiation to be sure.
My understanding is that one must nuke it from orbit to be sure.
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Haha....I'm going to make a donation to the EFF today! They're contributing to the common good by sticking it in these Bastard's eyes.
virtual cabinets? (Score:5, Informative)
> This month’s stupid patent, US Patent No. 6,690,400 (the ’400 patent), claims the idea of using “virtual cabinets” to graphically represent data storage and organization.
"Magic Desk" for the Commodore 64 (released in 1983) used virtual file cabinets.
So did GEOS applications, IIRC.
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Oh, and I forgot to add:
This is a stupid patent.
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It's like the people that issue these patents have never seen a computer.
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It's like the people that issue these patents have never seen a computer.
Of course. Only lawyers submit, examine and issue patents.
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Other than the operating system switch by clicking on a directory/folder/virtual cabinet (all 3 are the same thing in a graphic environment) I don't see anything that wasn't already available in the 80s, and even that might have existed.
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I'm not sure, it's been a long time, and I didn't work on it that much, but didn't the Wang Word Processing system describe collection of directories as cabinets? It's true they didn't use pictures of them, at least on the computer (but possibly in the documentation).
In fact, I vaguely remember some IBM 360 documentation that used the image of file cabinets to depict collections of files...
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The cabinets shown in the patent illustration look almost exactly like those used in AmigaDOS v1.x. They even open the same way. The Amiga was released in 1985, and the patent was filed in 1999.
Oh hey GEMSA, you want this taken down? (Score:5, Informative)
Well too fucking bad, because I'm reposting it instead. COME AT ME BRO!
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What is the funniest part of this is Australia doesn't even have software patents.
So this Australian company is registering a patent in a foreign land that it just could not do at home.
Re:Oh hey GEMSA, you want this taken down? (Score:4, Interesting)
There may be something else interesting here too. I'm not clear on it and may have it wrong, but the Trans Pacific Partnership was touted as allowing for the enforcement of cross jurisdiction ruling for things like this.
Did Trump just save the world from another round of vexatious patent trolling that uses cross-border court rulings as a weapon?
Ummmm....Yay Trump....Yaaayyy....ummm.
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It would have required all patent systems in the partnership to be as stupid as the US one, that's one of the major reasons other countries didn't want it. We didn't want US style patent trolling.
Fuck it (Score:3)
Just put a hit on the guy. Faster and certainly cheaper.
Grabs popcorn... (Score:2)
I wanna see a scenario where all the companies involved go for a counter suit and refuses to settle.