EFF Beats 'Stupid' Patent Troll In Court (courthousenews.com) 70
An Australian court can't make a California advocacy group take down a web page, a U.S. federal judge just ruled on Friday. Even if that web page calls a company's patents "stupid." Courthouse News reports:
San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation sued Global Equity Management, or GEMSA, in April, claiming the Australian firm exploited its home country's weaker free speech protections to secure an unconstitutional injunction against EFF. Kurt Opsahl, EFF's deputy executive director and general counsel, hailed the ruling as a victory for free speech. "We knew all along the speech was protected by the First Amendment," Opsahl said in a phone interview Friday. "We were pleased to see the court agree." Opsahl said the ruling sends a strong message EFF and other speakers can weigh in on important topics, like patent reform, without fear of being muzzled by foreign court orders.
The dispute stems from an article EFF published in June 2016, featuring GEMSA in its "Stupid Patent of the Month" series. The GEMSA patent is for a "virtual cabinet" to store data. In the article, EFF staff attorney Daniel Nazer called GEMSA a "classic patent troll" that uses its patent on graphic representations of data storage to sue "just about anyone who runs a website." The article also says GEMSA "appears to have no business other than patent litigation."
The judge granted EFF a default judgment, saying the Australian court's injunction was not only unenforceable in the United States but also "repugnant" to the U. S. Constitution.
The dispute stems from an article EFF published in June 2016, featuring GEMSA in its "Stupid Patent of the Month" series. The GEMSA patent is for a "virtual cabinet" to store data. In the article, EFF staff attorney Daniel Nazer called GEMSA a "classic patent troll" that uses its patent on graphic representations of data storage to sue "just about anyone who runs a website." The article also says GEMSA "appears to have no business other than patent litigation."
The judge granted EFF a default judgment, saying the Australian court's injunction was not only unenforceable in the United States but also "repugnant" to the U. S. Constitution.
Gotta wonder, (Score:5, Insightful)
if the outcome would have been the same had the firm in question been American rather than Australian. I have the impression that US courts are much more likely to condemn such overreaches when they are foreign than when they are domestic.
Re: Gotta wonder, (Score:2, Informative)
Apples to oranges. This was all about telling a foreign country to shove their court orders that try to tell Americans what they can and cannot do in the US.
Re: Gotta wonder, (Score:5, Informative)
This was all about telling a foreign country to shove their court orders that try to tell Americans what they can and cannot do in the US.
The most important part of this ruling is this:
The judge granted EFF a default judgment, saying the Australian court's injunction was "repugnant" to the U. S. Constitution.
The term "repugnant" was not chosen arbitrarily. It's a legal term used when litigators attempt to "domesticate" a foreign judgement in the U.S. This is a process where a U.S. court will recognize a foreign court's judgement as equal to and enforceable in the U.S. California law says:
a court in California is not required to recognize a foreign-country judgment if any of the following apply:
(3) The judgment of the cause of action or claim for relief upon which the judgment is based is repugnant to the public policy of the State of California or the United States.
In other words: while this judgement was delivered by a federal judge, no California court will recognize any Australian's court award of monetary damages based on this verdict.
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And if a California judge wishes to indicate a particular judgement should not be considered legal precedent, they are required to use the phrase "stinks like Ishtar".
This is the response Google wanted (Score:2)
Google got a US judgement that they need not obey a Canadian Supreme Court order (a temporary restraining order), but it wasn't about free speech, just commecial speech, by which they meant advertisements for stolen hardware designs.
They would have been far happier if the Canadian case was the <expletive deleted> pile of crap the Australian one was.
Re:Gotta wonder, (Score:5, Insightful)
Loser pays own bill plus the lower of the lawyer bills to opposing counsel. Unless lawyers themselves and self representing, then idiot pays other side's bill.
Otherwise big money will be toxic to sue.
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Makes contingency cases unworkable.
Shysters would file garbage cases with judgement proof clients to milk it.
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There is no "I" in "Borg".
Not uhh..!!! not by the time Apple gets done with it: iBorg
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The government wants the exclusive right to slaughter its population.
2nd amendment stands in their way though as population can defend themselves.
So they set up those shootings by some fake 'lone wolf' with access to weapons in order to whip the population into abandoning the 2nd.
Then the shit hits the fan.
Why else would it be forbidden for Joe average to possess protective gear?
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Re:Who was stupid? (Score:4, Funny)
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patent on stupidity
Sorry, there's existing prior use. I was just reading the other day a cave explorer found on a wall: "Grog, here, hold beer. Watch th"
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There may be consequences because of that..
Only in Australia...
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What I want to know is which piece of Australian legislation gives the Australian courts any kind of jurisdiction over content hosted in a foreign country and why the judge in Australia thinks they have any right to make a court order against a site located in the USA.
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In this case, South Australian defamation law.
Australia's justice system is almost as adversarial as America's, and the EFF did not turn up to court to defend itself. As such, the argument that any order was unenforceable was never presented to the court. GEMSA probably only had to show that the EFF publishes in Australia by virtue of the fact that their web site is visible in Australia.
This may seem like affrontery on behalf of the court, but the fact is they only considered one side of the argument.
Just i
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Not defending, just explaining.
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...it's not necessarily the court's fault.
Me court. Me stupid. Me don't want to check merits of case. Me just hear one argument only. Me cannot think about validity. Me don't know where is ... U s Of A??
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Don't look so smug. U s of A did the same thing with Kim Dotcom.
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Never heard of it, mate. But steak sounds good.
What, you mean the Monkee or Bowie? They're both dead, mate.
Besides, they'd have to give up their citizenship. We take Section 44(i) seriously these days.
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Slogan: "Government. Don't turn it on, take it apart!"
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Looks like that lady who tried to sue them lost and went bankrupt over this.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/... [couriermail.com.au]
She really tried to become famous and make a buck on this, but she lost everything. Looks to me like the system worked.
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Yeah, worked so well. Ask the students that had to pay court cost and have their life through the meatgrinder for a few years. Just think if it were you.
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Like that never happens in the UK or the USA?
Nobody (apart from Andrew Bolt's fanboys) thinks the law is bad. The students were legally in the right and legally vindicated. It's just that the law was administered badly, and again, Australia isn't exactly alone here.
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And that makes it right ?
Nobody claimed that.
My problem is that Australian discourse on this was really fucked up for a while. People were arguing about everything except the actual problem.
The point of AHRC mediation is precisely so that cases like this avoid going to court and nobody gets too inconvenienced if a case is meritless. problem is that The AHRC dropped the ball, making the process itself the punishment.
Contrary to what lucm said, the system didn't work. But more to the point, the system didn't work as designed.
This sum [theconversation.com]
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Yeah, worked so well. Ask the students that had to pay court cost and have their life through the meatgrinder for a few years. Just think if it were you.
Did you read the story? They sued her for those court costs and won.
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redirect to register and pay to read this shit
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Here's an article with no paywall:
Judge Denies QUT Admin's Racism Appeal [abc.net.au]
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My favorite part:
Ms Prior had argued she was unable to continue working face-to-face with white people following a series of Facebook posts made after Mr Wood was asked to leave an Indigenous-only computer lab at QUT in 2013.
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They ruined everybody's life. Win-win!
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Disbar the lawyers. (Score:3)
There needs to be much more of that. Lawsuits like this shouldnâ(TM)t be brought and the way to discourage them is to take away the milk.
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Please, if we started disbarring lawyers for bad conduct, there wouldn't be a single one of them left.
I mean, PLEASE, let's start disbarring lawyers for bad conduct, until there isn't a single one of them left.
This Is Absurd (Score:1)
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Well, jurisdiction is normally a good idea. If I reside in the EU and hack your computer, it is actually helpful that you can go to your own countries legal system and get redress, instead of having to go abroad for justice. Vice versa, noone would be able to afford justice in the USA if they don't live there, so it also prevents inhabitants of rich countries from abusing those of poorer countries. Well, not if the gap is too big, but if the gap is not that big you're going to be able to get justice somewhe
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Nice one mate, you forgot to mention how many time the British and Americans have interfered with our legal system and democratic process so you can exploit us. We hate patent trolls here too, but America invented them. Just because they exist here doesn't mean we want them here.
"...defamatory, false, and malicious slander." (Score:2)
From GEMSA's cease and desist letter [documentcloud.org] "... to write you in relation to the defamatory, false and malicious slander which you and Electronic Frontier Foundation made concerning our client..."
There really can only be one response:
"I resent that! Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel." [wikipedia.org]
(In passing, I find it curious that they say "to write you" rather than "to write to you". Previously I've only seen the former construction from Americans, but this is an Australian law firm.)
Same approach for US itself (Score:3)
About time... (Score:2)
Virtual disk/containers/whatever have been around for a long time; almost certainly before this damned company even existed. (It's hard to describe the intensity of the hate I have for companies like this.)
We used to manage/store datasets in virtual disks (mounting them in a way akin to using Linux's loopback device) on RSX-11 fer gawd's sake.
Funny.. (Score:2)