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Cisco Sued over OFDM Wireless Standards

Posted by simoniker on from the floating-through-the-ether dept.

Agent Green writes "It's definitely not the first time someone has been sued over a standard, but Wi-LAN is in the process of taking Cisco to court over the OFDM encoding which it claims to have patents for - the standards in question apply to 802.11a/g. Interestingly, this case is being brought in Canada, where the defense needs to prove its case. Might be time to join and expand the patent busting brigade?"

2 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Re:exactly! by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I actually think your house would make for a good party zone, so me and the boys will be around next Saturday night.

    No thank you, but if you'd like to build yourself a house just like it I'd have no particular objections.

    KFG

  2. Patent reform should also restrict enforcement by clusterix · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In addition to limiting what can be patented and better analysis before granting, there must be some economic morale requirements for enforcement.

    There are entirely too many IP shell companies out there that do nothing but threaten and harass useful companies without providing commercial products based on the patents themselves. They have no plans to exploit their manufacturing monopoly in any honest way. Instead, they should be required in some form to manufacturer real products utilizing their IP or risk losing enforeability in some way. That may require them to cross-license needed IP as well as seriously limit this entire anti-social/economic lawyer business. It could be possible that plaintifs in patent cases must first prove their manufacturing intent to some law/court derived set of requirements before action is started.