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U.S. Firms Take on Australia's CSIRO Over Patents

dingram17 writes "ABC News is reporting that six U.S. computer companies (Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft and Netgear) are taking legal action to try to break a U.S. patent that the CSIRO holds on wireless networking. The CSIRO has patents on OFDM technology, as used in 802.11a and 802.11g. It has been alleged that the CSIRO demands $4 per chipset for the use of this technology. It appears that the patent in question is U.S. Patent 5,487,069 'Wireless LAN.' From a quick look, this appears to be a wide ranging patent."

9 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wow.... by myowntrueself · · Score: 2, Funny

    "if you wanna play it like that, the US invented almost every major technology this century"

    Quite right, like Al Gore and the Internet.

    --
    In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
  2. In other news... by ElNonoMasa · · Score: 5, Funny

    Negotiations with CSIRO have come to a halt, and US troops are readying a full invas^H^H^H^H^H liberation attack on Australia.
    It has been discovered that the CSIRO technology could potentially assist enemies of the free world.
    The first stage of the attack, dubbed operation "Patent Freedom", could commence as soon as next week.

  3. Re:Wow.... by masklinn · · Score: 5, Funny
    So what was this major thing they invented?
    Software patents?
    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  4. Re:Turnabout is fair play... by masklinn · · Score: 2, Funny
    no military to support
    No military at all, in fact...

    Who said easy target?
    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  5. Re:Wow.... by Frogbert · · Score: 4, Funny

    Whats that now? Your saying Australia isn't a state of America? Thats news to us Australians.

  6. Shh, don't let them know by Hecatonchires · · Score: 2, Funny

    And that gaping chasm, its carpeted with the bodies of dead spies!

    --

    Yay me!

  7. Bush declares 'war on technologists' by Hecatonchires · · Score: 3, Funny

    In further news, George W Bush declared war on technologists today, stating that 'for to long have we stood by and done nothing while Australians developed interesting telecommunications networks' and also that 'the whole point of this free trade agreement was to stick it to them, not have them stick it to us. John Howard promised me that wouldn't happen. He promised!'

    Dick Cheney, while stroking his missile launch codes briefcase, refused to comment. Rumsfeld barked like a dog.

    --

    Yay me!

  8. Re:Wow.... by SQL+Error · · Score: 2, Funny

    Americans didn't invent the freedom, the French did.

    Oh sure, on paper.

    But in the real world, the French version shipped 16 years late, was full of bugs, and support had to be outsorced to Corsica.

    A dozen platform changes later, the French are running Freedom 5.0 and it still doesn't work properly.

    Meanwhile, America gets by on Freedom 1.0.27. Admittedly, the last patch took two hundred years to roll out...

  9. European culture by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hell, the way you're dressed right now is based on U.S. popular culture.

    And the way US citiziens dress was previously based in the European culture. Hell, they whole US culture is based in the European culture - that's from where most of american people comes, remember?

    I listen to flamenco and classic music and that is not based in american culture by the way.