Global Equity Management (GEMSA) patent challenged as likely invalid

On May 30, 2017, Unified filed a petition for inter partes review (IPR) against U.S. Patent 6,690,400, owned and asserted by Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd. (GEMSA), a well-known NPE. The '400 Patent, directed to a graphical user interface managing disk partitions and operating systems, has been asserted in multiple district court cases against various defendants including Alibaba, eBay, Ericsson, and Amazon, among others. The '400 Patent has also been the subject of a district court order and PTAB institution decision finding some independent claims, not challenged here, unpatentable as indefinite. 

The '400 Patent has been asserted against the following companies:

  • Alibaba Group Holding, Ltd. (Alibaba Cloud)
  • Alibaba.com, Inc. 
  • eBay, Inc.
  • Ericsson, Inc. 
  • Amazon.com, Inc. 
  • Amazon Web Services, Inc. 
  • Johnson & Johnson USA, Inc.
  • Philips, Inc.
  • SAP America, Inc.
  • Siemens Corporation
  • The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. 
  • Ticketleap.com, LLC 
  • Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. (d/b/a Ticketmaster, Inc.)
  • Ubisoft Studio, Inc. (d/b/a Ubisoft)
  • General Electric Company
  • McGraw Hill Financial, Inc. d/b/a S&P Global and S&P Capital IQ
  • Zynga, Inc.
  • Alcatel-Lucent, Inc.
  • Uber Technologies, Inc.
  • Artek Surfin Chemicals, Ltd. d/b/a Galata Chemicals, LLC
  • Netflix, Inc.
  • AdRoll, Inc.
  • Spotify USA, Inc.
  • Hitachi America, Ltd.
  • Zillow, Inc. 
  • Expedia, Inc.
  • Hotels.com, LP 
  • CruiseShipCenters, LP 
  • Travelocity USA, LP 
  • TripAdvisor, Inc.
  • Hipmunk, Inc.
  • AirBNB, Inc.
  • Priceline Group, Inc.

To read the petition and view the entire case proceeding, please see our PTAB Portal