EFF seeks default judgment in ‘stupid patent’ dispute
Civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is seeking default judgment in a dispute surrounding its ‘stupid patent’ blog.
The EFF writes a blog called “Stupid Patent of the Month” and it provoked trouble when the group featured a patent owned by Global Equity Management (GEMSA) in June last year.
US number 6,690,400, the patent concerned, claims the idea of a “graphic user interface that enables a user to virtualise the system and to define secondary storage physical devices through the graphical depiction of cabinets”.
According to the EFF, Australia-based GEMSA filed suit against it in the Supreme Court of South Australia in October 2016.
However, the EFF claimed that GEMSA didn’t properly serve the civil liberties group with the lawsuit.
“Notably, the only statements the statement of claim alleges are false—that the patent is ‘stupid’, that GEMSA is a ‘patent troll’, and that GEMSA ‘is suing anyone with a website’—are plainly hyperbolic statements of opinion,” said the EFF (see exhibit 14 for the statement of claim).
The Australian court issued an injunction at the end of October, ordering the EFF to immediately remove the article from its website and not to otherwise disseminate it (see exhibit 18).
The EFF has not removed the article, despite the injunction.
In April this year, the EFF hit back, filing a suit at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.
“The injunction, which was entered by an Australian court in a lawsuit filed against EFF there by GEMSA, would never withstand constitutional scrutiny in the US,” said the claim.
In a blog post, published on Monday, July 24, the EFF claimed that GEMSA has not responded to the suit and confirmed it is now seeking a default judgment.
“We believe that we should prevail. The law does not allow companies or individuals to make an end run around the First Amendment by finding a judge in another country to sign an injunction that censors speech in the US,” said the EFF.
In June 2015, the EFF was sued by a patent lawyer for writing an allegedly defamatory blog that criticised a patent owned by a company he represents.
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