Patent Troll That Sued EFF And Lost... Now Loses Its Bullshit Patent As Well
Remember GEMSA (Global Equty Management (SA) Pty. Ltd.)? That's the Australian patent troll who "won" a Stupid Patent of the Month award from EFF for its silly patent (US Patent 6,690,400 on "virtual cabinets representing a discrete operating system." GEMSA sued a bunch of companies, including Airbnb and Zillow for supposedly violating the patent. Oh, and then it sued EFF in Australia, getting an order from the court demanding that EFF take down its article and barring EFF from ever publishing anything about any GEMSA patents.
That kinda thing is not going to fly in the US, and so EFF went to court in the US, seeking declaratory judgment that such an Australian court order was totally unenforceable in the US under the SPEECH Act. Late last year, the court gave a thorough and complete victory to EFF, making it clear that GEMSA could not, in any way, hope to enforce its Australian order in the US, as it clearly would violate EFF's First Amendment rights.
And now, the US Patent Office has basically killed GEMSA's patent that EFF called out in the first place, via the all important inter partes review system that is currently being challenged at the Supreme Court (ruling coming soon...).
The ’400 patent described its “invention” as “a Graphic User Interface (GUI) that enables a user to virtualize the system and to define secondary storage physical devices through the graphical depiction of cabinets.” In other words, virtual storage cabinets on a computer. E-Bay, Alibaba, and Booking.com, filed a petition for inter partes review arguing that claims from the ’400 patent were obvious in light of the Partition Magic 3.0 User Guide (1997) from PowerQuest Corporation. Three administrative patent judges from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) agreed.
The PTAB opinion notes that Partition Magic’s user guide teaches each part of the patent’s Claim 1, including the portrayal of a “cabinet selection button bar,” a “secondary storage partitions window,” and a “cabinet visible partition window.”
The opinion demonstrated this graphically as well:
The PTAB laughed off GEMSA's argument that the original owner of the patent, Flash Vos, somehow "moved the computer industry a quantum leap forward in the late 90's" by pointing out that GEMSA "has put forth no evidence that Flash Vos or GEMSA actually had any commercial success." Ouch.
I'm curious if GEMSA will now seek to sue the US Patent Office in Australia as well...
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