Australian WiFi Inventors Win US Legal Battle 193
First time accepted submitter Kangburra writes "Australian government science body CSIRO said Sunday it had won a multi-million-dollar legal settlement in the United States to license its patented technology that underpins the WiFi platform worldwide. Scientists from the agency invented the wireless local area network (WLAN) technology that is the basis of the WiFi signal employed by computers, smartphones and other Internet-ready devices around the world."
Re:I have no knowledge of what is patented by this (Score:5, Informative)
This lawsuit began years ago. They began suing people in 2005.
Somebody shake that mans hand (Score:5, Informative)
The vast majority of this money will go back into further research, slowly making the world a better place.
For those who care to know (PDF): Their Most Recent Annual Report [csiro.au].
Re:Break Out The Australian Sparkling White Wine (Score:2, Informative)
The CSIRO is actually a government funded research institute. They are known as the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Re:Who picks these "standards" anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
It's nothing to do with "standards" at all. It's solely about technology which makes wifi work indoors without signal echo. They came up with the solution to the issue, patented it, then everyone else adapted it without licensing the technology. This is actually a perfect usage of patent and exactly what it's for.
Re:Break Out The Australian Sparkling White Wine (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, not too likely. The CSIRO [csiro.au] is one of the few genuine research and development companies out there. The research they do is very useful to many Australians - and they do a considerable amount of work assisting third world countries with farming, food production and water sanitation. While they are taxpayer funded (being a government organisation), a good part of their research dollars come from patents on stuff they come up with. In this case, this is a patent that has been recognised by almost all the companies that make products with it as this snippet from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] explains:
In late November 2007, CSIRO won a lawsuit against Buffalo Technology, with an injunction that Buffalo must stop supplying AirStation products that infringe on the 802.11 patent.
On 19 September 2008, the Federal Circuit ruled in Buffalo’s favour and remanded the case to the district court ruling that the district court’s Summary Judgement was insufficient on the merits of obviousness of CSIRO’s patent. Therefore, this case was to be tried again before the district court. In this connection Buffalo was hopeful that it would shortly be permitted to, once again, sell IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g compliant products in the United States. On 13 July 2009 Buffalo announced the settlement of the patent infringement action.
As of 23 April 2009, the CSIRO has obtained settlements from most of the other organisations involved, including Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Asus, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Nintendo, Toshiba, Netgear, D-Link, Belkin, SMC, Accton and 3Com.
Furthermore, even this article on WIFI on Wikipedia has very explanatory [wikipedia.org] information:
A large number of patents by many companies are used in 802.11 standard. In 1992 and 1996, Australian organisation the CSIRO obtained patents for a method later used in Wi-Fi to "unsmear" the signal. In April 2009, 14 tech companies agreed to pay CSIRO for infringements on the CSIRO patents. This lead to WiFi being attributed as an Australian invention.
Re:I have no knowledge of what is patented by this (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't wait for it to be adapted as such. A large majority of manufacturers rightfully accept the patents involved. See this comment I posted above [slashdot.org] for a more detailed explanation.
Re:I have no knowledge of what is patented by this (Score:5, Informative)
After, I believe, substantial attempts to get people to negotiate licences without involving a court.
Re:I have no knowledge of what is patented by this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Somebody shake that mans hand (Score:4, Informative)
Australia != US.
Re:I have no knowledge of what is patented by this (Score:5, Informative)
It also demonstrates some of the benefits of a cross-specialisation science organisation like the CSIRO. IIRC the original idea was come up with (and used) by someone at CSIRO working in radio astronomy. More commercial uses were identified and they sought to commercialise it by licencing it to anyone who could make use of it.
This is not the case of a patent troll buying some patent and belatedly wielding it as a weapon in an established market nor a company leveraging a patent to hurt competitors. It's a genuine invention that they tried to licence but ultimately had to go to court over because the Wifi companies (perhaps not used to dealing with entities outside their patent clique) refused to licence.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, the CSIRO has done everything possible. They've been attempting good-faith licensing terms for years and getting rebuffed with "fuck off back Down Under, Aussie, you're dealing with the big boys now". They developed a technology that we all depend on and have been trying to get recognition of that fact for years.
I'm a nerd and I fucking hate patent trolls, but I'm applauding the CSIRO. They're the good guys in this fight.
Re:Break Out The Australian Sparkling White Wine (Score:4, Informative)
That might be overstating it a little, CSIRO's income from IP:
2006-7 30.6M
2007-8 81.7M
2008-9 229.6M
2009-10 46.7M
2010-11 29.2M
For 2010-11 income from IP was only ~2% of their total revenue.
2008-9 was a big year, making about 20% of their revenue and includes the $205 million settlement from a previous WiFi case.
Which isn't to say that CSIRO should not bother chasing IP revenue, obviously it can be very rewarding.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed they have.
"Ozturf grasses have been scientifically tested by the CSIRO for strength and long term ultraviolet stability."
(http://www.ozturf.com.au/products.html)
Re:Break Out The Australian Sparkling White Wine (Score:5, Informative)
Re:where's the details on the patents (Score:4, Informative)
annother source (Score:2, Informative)
Catalyst did a story on this just recently. http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2708730.htm. This would be an interesting watch for anyone that has an interest in wireless technologies. It explains what the patent is, how it was conceived and the effort it took for them to gain credit for their work.