Alibaba sued for patent infringement in the US
Australia-based Global Equity Management has filed a complaint against Alibaba for allegedly infringing two patents centring on its Flash Vos and Super Operating System (SOS) computer software.
Flash Vos is the predecessor to SOS, which for the first time allowed multiple operating environments to coexist on the same platform with their own independent filesystems, according to the complaint.
The case, centring on US patent numbers 6,690,400 and 7,356,677, was filed at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division on Tuesday, October 4.
In the complaint, Global Equity claims that before SOS, computers were only able to use a single operating system.
The complaint explains that: “One of the key features of these innovations is the method of accessing additional relevant information from the graphical user interface (GUI) by simply clicking on the information links positioned on the right hand side of the GUI.”
The ‘400 patent is called “Graphic user interface for resources management of super operating system based computers”, and was granted in February 2004. The ‘677 patent, granted in April 2008, is called “Computer system capable of fast switching between multiple operating systems and applications”.
Alibaba allegedly uses a website with a GUI to administer and manage aliyun.com and other websites that infringes the two patents involved in the case.
