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."

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 US. Why? According to the EFF argument, the Australian ruling runs afoul of free speech protections granted under the United States Constitution—namely, that opinions are protected.

GEMSA attorneys have threatened to take this Australian court order to American search engine companies to deindex the blog post, making the post harder to find online.

"It is important to get a court to ensure that EFF is not silenced, to have the court establish that this speech is well protected by the US Constitution and other laws," Kurt Opsahl, an EFF attorney, told Ars.

The EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month campaign began back in August of 2014 with a post on a patent for "a doctor's computer-secretary." The series has since highlighted patents covering everything from "out of office e-mail" to a patient monitoring system depicted in Deep Space Nine. Opsahl told Ars that this is just the second time EFF has been sued over its "stupid patent" series—the first case, filed back in 2015, was quickly dropped.

"Suing just about anyone"

EFF first took notice of the Australian firm back in June 2016, when it dubbed one of GEMSA’s patents as a "stupid patent of the month." As EFF wrote:

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. While this is bad, the worse news is that the patent’s owner is suing just about anyone who runs a website. The ‘400 patent is owned by Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd. (“GEMSA”) which seems to be a classic patent troll. GEMSA is incorporated in Australia and appears to have no business other than patent litigation. The patent began its life with a company called Flash VOS. This company once offered a product that allowed users to run multiple operating systems on personal computers with x86-compatible processors. … In the past year, GEMSA has sued dozens of companies, ranging from Airbnb to Zillow. In each case, it makes the bare assertion that the defendant’s website infringes the ’400 patent. For example, it simply states that "AIRBNB maintains, controls and/or operates a website with a graphical user interface ("GUI") at www.airbnb.com that infringes one or more claims of the ‘400 patent."

Pasha Mehr, the Australian attorney representing GEMSA, did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Tit for tat

In his initial letter to EFF dated August 26, 2016, Mehr dubbed the blog post as "defamatory, false, and malicious slander."

EFF then hired an Australian law firm for the sole purpose of rebuking Mehr's letter with one of its own: "your letter is very vague and fails to specify any specific statements in the Article that are considered to be defamatory."

By October 2016, GEMSA's director, Schumann Rafizadeh, submitted an affidavit noting that he was "hurt and insulted" at EFF's claims. Curiously, he essentially wrote that EFF's efforts would hit GEMSA where it mattered: the company's bottom line.

I am concerned that if the article is not immediately removed from EFF.ORG, and the defendant otherwise publishes or broadcasts the statements, GEMSA will sustain irreparable damage to its reputation and credibility. The article's continued publication and circulation through various common web search engines and other such websites is continuing to damage the reputation and credibility of GEMSA, which it critically relies upon for its negotiations and ongoing discussions for the licensing arrangements and our Intellectual Property (IP), including the referenced patent.

In a second affidavit filed just two weeks later, Rafizadeh admitted that its business and legal tactics were meeting some resistance for the first time.

Since the publication of the Article, U.S Defendants have joined and instated two lnterparte Proceedings against GEMSA in the United States. This is the first time that such proceedings have been instituted to directly challenge GEMSA, starting with the '400 Patent described in the Article. … Furthermore, GEMSA had organised and planned multiple mediation efforts with respect to the U.S cases in which it a plaintiff party enforcing the unwitting use of our patent. Many of these mediations were cancelled or delayed without reason following the publication of the article. The Plaintiff was forced to incur resulting expenses including preparatory legal costs, overseas travel costs and expert's cancellations fees. This is an estimated loss exceeding $25,000.00.

As EFF has made no appearance before an Australian court, GEMSA was likely able to be granted the default judgement against the organization—the removal of the purportedly offending blog post. Six months later, the EFF post remains.