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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."
First, let me start by saying that the patent system is pretty stupid. However, its pretty hypocrit of US companies to fight a patent that does not fit them. These companies would not even think for a minute to sue someone else over a patent they own. But when someone uses it against them then they cry foul.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
Simply stunning. So a company actually holds a legal patent to a technology they invented and since the big boys (Dell, Apple, etc) don't want to pay the royalties they try to legally "break" the patent. Does anyone else see something wrong with this? I hardly see these companies as the victim.
It seems that they can't handle what they dish out.
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
Kind-of a catch-all government sponsored department for scientific research.
See http://www.csiro.au/
I hope the CSIRO wins considereing the way we get stuffed over by US companies out here.
Remember, people: Patents are only good when they put money in YOUR pocket.
After all the patents U.S. companies have been taking out for this exact purpose, I say, let the Aussies bash 'em once!
At any rate, I've given up hope that the patent system will actually be fixed...
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
So it seems that if you have lots of money and you find a patent held by someone that infringes on your ability to rape for money, you just take them to court to null the patent.
The companies listed I am sure all have patents that are just as far reaching or broad,(didn't sony just apply for a patent for a method of transfering information directly to your brain), which I am sure could be contested in the same way.
I guess the only difference is that Joe Nobody doesn't have the cash or the political/economic connections that these companies have.
if they win, what will the precidence be for the rest of us as to the legality or coverage of US patents? Could this be the loophole many have been looking for to get all those wide reaching, stupid patents we all hate and read about, dismissed?
Feed my eyes...
Why won't these companies make up their minds? Do they like protecting IP with patents or not? It looks as though the only important IP is their IP.
Microsoft has been using patents for years to squash oposition, now they are sick and tired of $4 per chip? That must be breaking their bank!
I hope the CSIRO gets to keep the patent and the others keep paying the $4 fee. the patent system is Pathetic and stupid and Im sure this is a pain for the big guys, but while they use their patents in the same way.. then who cares...
I mean if these guys own the patent I say more power to them. Just maybe with events such as these happening and more to come in the near future we could expect the big boys to realise that patents are evil? Pretty high hopes but a person could always dream.
Havin' it large, livin' the life, Welcome to the land of the rising sun.
Australian government funded research organisation. Since it is never given enough money, it relies on patents such as these to fund basic and applied research.
From a previous slashdot article, http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/14/07 2201&tid=109&tid=141&tid=155&tid=1
How hypocritical are Microsoft appearing?
On one hand they're trying to teach kids flawed views on intellectual property to ensure that future generations won't pirate as much, and on the other hand they're doing exactly what they're trying to prevent, the theft of intellectual property.
Such sad, sad, little people.
(CSIRO) Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization ....
Looks like more IP / Copyright litigation to me. WLAN has too many standards, too many cooks, too many IP holders to ever really get anywhere without a fight.
I'm interested to see how this works out. A patent is there to protect the inventor and let them make some money... now the big corps (it seems) don't want to play by those rules because it is costing them money?
I don't know anymore... I think the problem would be mitigated much easier if all the lawyers just dropped out of sight, or dead, whichever comes first.
eyes
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
As an Aussie Taxpayer I am only too happy to see US companies having to fight for technology. CSIRO will loose in the end, but it is so nice to see a fight. Stick your FTA up your FBA
There was an unknown error in the submission.
CSIRO is an applied science research organisation where part of the money is provided by the Australian government, and part of the money is provided by business.
There is a strong focus on making practical discoveries for use in industry.
If the US would then similarly like to not honour Australian patents, they're welcome -- given that's what they appear to want anyway.
Probably worth pointing out that the CSIRO is an arm of the Australian Government.
If the companies in question want to reap the benefits of the patent system, they have to pay the price of the patent system. But since most three-year-old children show greater maturity than most of these corporations, it's no surprise that these corporations want to reap the benefits without paying the price.
They're just lucky that the organization in question (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, a research arm of the Australian government) isn't a competitor. Although I suppose in this case it could use this patent to give Australian companies an advantage over their American competition.
It's about damned time the U.S. corporations got a black eye from the bullshit patent situation over here. After all, they're the ones who have been abusing it. I just wish it happened far more often.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I think that there should be a blanket patent exemption for pure research, though I'm not quite sure how one should define the exemption.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I read this and couldn't help but laugh out loud.
6 very large, very well backed AMERICAN companies, are going to take an AUSTRALIAN government backed RESEARCH ORGANISATION in an IP battle.
Right after the free trade agreement was struck, that is meant to bring our IP laws into line with the US?
I hope CSIRO doesn't back down. Stick it to the companies. The same companies that would use those laws to screw anyone else, who infringes on their IP.
C'mon AUSSIE C'mon!
I love the way these companies continue to file for thousands of patents themselves but when a competitor's patent gets in the way, they want to squash it. I'm all for them squashing patents. The more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. I haven't seen a software/algorithm patents that helped foster competition or reduce prices for the consumer. Part of me hopes that patent issues for the big companies will help them realize that the patent system is in need of massive reform. Right after that my realist side recognizes that the big companies will just play the system like they always do. Sigh.
Ladies and Gentlemen, come one, come all!! See karma whoring in its truest form!! Watch in amazement as a question is asked which could easily have been answered by Google, watch as 17 essential identical responses are posted in hopes of being modded "Informative". The showing is free, free, free but hurry as seats will go quickly.
Seriously, were all 17 answers really necessary?
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Any government funded organization that is built in to a mountain protected by a gaping chasm is not going to worry to much about anything.
Our scientists thought it up we should keep the $4 per chip not like they can't charge an extra $4 for a notebook computer
Let me first say that I strongly dislike what's going on with patents now, software and otherwise.
I like that inventors get a chance to make a buck off their inventions, that's the productive and creative part that congress orig. talked about when they granted patents.
I'm strongly displeased at the use/mis-use of patents today. They're used as stragic weapons against competetors. They're used to block new technology. They're used to destroy governments and individual rights (think Africa and South America with AIDS drugs). The current patent crap (for instance, patenting of genetic material found in natural foods and herbs) is simply a means to give multinational corps. final fascist control over the world economy. All work will have to be for them, because you'll need their protection and cross-licensing to do anything. You will not be able to wipe your ass with leaves grown in your own back yard if Bayer finds some "cooling gell" in that species that they want to patent. Software patents are making it illegal to work or create for yourself, as without the protection of MS/HP/DELL, your thoughts will have been patented by someone else and you will be breaking the law by using a wheel of your own creation (even if you didn't copy anything).
But in this case, I'll settle for "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." MS/HP/DELL/Netgear/etc. want it their way when it helps them and call for invalidation/threats/whatever/manuvering/spin when they have to pay.... Time for you suckers to pay....I hope they ream you raw too, as I'll happily know that you are eating part of that $4 just to keep the sales numbers up. Better yet, I'd love to see you buy 10M of those chips, only to have them sitting in your fab plants because nobody wants to buy your product at the inflated price.
If they want real reform, they should help to change patent law away from the mess it's in now, otherwise these industry blow-hards should just shut up and keep paying! You know, you can't win all the time..
They don't really want reform though, they simply want control and they're mad at the fact that they DON'T have the patent. They'd do just the same thing roles reversed.
Dammit this was supposed to be in response to another guy's post! Ignore both of these!!!
10100111001
I'm an Australian, and a researcher and an advocate of implementation patents, but I say screw the CSIRO. The CSIRO exists for the sole purpose of scamming government funding. They steal other researchers' ideas. They build inferior technologies. But they get all the attention and money. I hope they lose this court case.
Also, if they lose this case, maybe more people will succeed in overturning pthese stupid conceptual patents.
Yes, please let's have more law suites like this, regardless the merit. Maybe it will finally help the industry to realize the harm and absurdity of software patents.
This Patent is not broad as in "vague and meaningless" - rather, it contains many specific claims, and thus only affects certain technologies.
....
The "Background of the Invention" section is written in plain English instead of Patentese, and includes the following:
(If it sounds dated, well, the application was filed on the 23rd of November, 1993)
"Accordingly, the need arises for a LAN to which such portable devices can be connected by means of a wireless or radio link.
Such wireless LANs are known, however, hitherto they have been substantially restricted to low data transmission rates. In order to achieve widespread commercial acceptability, it is necessary to have a relatively high transmission rate and therefore transmit on a relatively high frequency, of the order of 1 GHz or higher. As will be explained hereafter, radio transmission at such high frequencies encounters a collection of unique problems.
One wireless LAN which is commercially available is that sold by Motorola under the trade name ALTAIR. This system operates at approximately 18 GHz, however, the maximum data transmission rate is limited to approximately 3-6 Mbit/s. A useful review of this system and the problems of wireless reception at these frequencies and in "office" environments is contained in "Radio Propagation and Anti-multipath Techniques in the WIN Environment", James E. Mitzlaff IEEE Network Magazine November 1991 pp. 21-26.
This engineering designer concludes that the inadequate performance, and the large size, expense and power consumption of the hardware needed to adaptively equalize even a 10 Mbit/s data signal are such that the problems of multipath propagation cannot thereby be overcome in Wireless In-Building Network (WIN) systems. Similarly, spread spectrum techniques which might also be used to combat multipath problems consume too much bandwidth (300 MHz for 10 Mbits/s) to be effective. A data rate of 100 Mbit/s utilizing this technology would therefore consume 3 GHz of bandwidth.
Instead, the solution adopted by Motorola and Mitzlaff is a directional antenna system with 6 beams for each antenna resulting in 36 possible transmission paths to be periodically checked by the system processor in order to locate the "best quality" path and "switch" the antennae accordingly. This procedure adds substantial bulk and cost to the system. This procedure is essentially the conversion of a multipath transmission problem into a single path transmission environment by the use of directional antennae.
OBJECTS AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the present invention is to provide a wireless LAN in a confined multipath transmission environment having a high bit rate even through the reciprocal of the data or information bit rate (the data "period") is short relative to the time delay differences between significant transmission paths.
Preferably, transmission is enhanced by the use of one or more of the following techniques, namely interactive channel sounding, forward error correction with redundancy sufficient for non-interactive correction, modulation with redundancy sufficient for interactive error correction by re-transmission of at least selected data, and the choice of allocation of data between sub-channels.
The radio transmission is also preferably divided into small packets of data each of which is transmitted over a time period in which the transmission characteristics over the predetermined range are relatively constant.
The encoding of the data is preferably carried out on an ensemble of carriers each costituting a sub-channel and having a different frequency with the modulation of each individual carrier preferably being multi-level modulation of carrier amplitude and/or phase (mQAM).
if I had such a patent in my pocket, I'd licence it out on terms that said I could renegotiate any licence if and when my "client" decided to sue me for anything whatsoever.
In other words, you can licence it from me for $4 per unit sold. Complain about the patent; if you lose, it becomes $8 per unit. Complain about anything else, and it becomes $12 per unit. Still want to complain, or am I now your newest bestest buddy...?
Almost seems like common sense, which IP law in general is lacking across the board.
CSIRO is a not-for-profit Australian Government organisation. Do all these companies really want to screw around with what is likely to be their biggest customer in Australia ?
Invalidate the patent by all means if it shouldn't have been granted. However, if it is legitimate, then just pay the licensing fees.
Remember, a patent is a government granted monopoly for a time period to allow the patent holder to both recoup their costs and to make a profit out of inventing the idea that has been patented. If these companies don't like that, then they should have all their patents revoked immediately, or they should sue the US government for incopetence because the US government granted the patent in the first place.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
If they are going to take money off me and use it for research then I think they _should_ try and recoup the invested money back, especially from foreign corporations who didn't contribute to the research in the first place. Giving away the tech that I helped pay for wouldn't help me at all. It would only help a few specific companies in a specific area. Much better if they can get a return on the investment and then reduce the need for me to make additional contributions by more self funding.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Makes it seem as if /. is just a bunch of australian mac lovers, doesn't it?
Is that to some extent CSIRO seem to be using the patent system for what it was designed for. They have 'invented' something and are now trying to licence it to make money directly from that invention.
To me this seems purer than a company patenting something and then using that patent as a means to create an artificial monopoly and lock out competitors.
$4 does sound like quite a lot per unit but I wonder if they can do that because they are only on one end of the patent equation.
I'm sure MS, IBM etc would like to charge obscene amounts for a patent they own too but as they are on both the selling and buying end of such deals they maybe cautious about inflating the accepted price of patent licencing?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
CSIRO is an applied science research organisation
Actually they still do some real science, though admittedly the focus was set to commerce during the Hawke/Keating years.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Hmmm, how about "research that doesn't end up with the results being patented"? Or "research, the results of which are released into the public domain"?
Thus the eighth sign of the apocalypse appeared....
We all knew this was coming when our (Australian) government adopted the stupid FTA.
The FTA means our country will be hopelessly entangled in the same mess that is the US Government.
Kiss our patent and legal system goodbye.
Next thing you know, we'll be outlawing the sasquatch too...
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.
I know this is totally off-topic but, WTF is this?: Google Sat Map of UFO over Florida
If this has already been discussed here at Slashdot, when? I want to know, cause it looks like a UFO. Or is it a joke by google?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
First I need to state that I am an Aussie, and I fully support what the CSIRO stands for The CSIRO has a right to their patent, unlike NASA they can make money from their inventions, and hence are able to increase their budget without out the bill being footed by the TAX payer. I can only say to to those unhappy about the patent, the US government agreed to the FTA (Unfortunately so did our governement against what many of us wanted) and hence US companies and individuals are now bound by the patent, which was pointed out previously has been around since 1993. If you don't like it, complain to your government and get the FTA rewritten. And to that idiot who made some slightly homourous comment about invading out wonderful country, your troops woudln't know what hit them, Just look at the War games results, and the success rate of our troops.
Admiral Trigger Happy
If patents have some uses it should be used to prevent wholesale copying of complete designs, which is as impossible to accidentally reinvent as it is to write a novel only to find that someone has already written essentially the same thing. The broad patents are better struck down, and I oppose anyone who wants to use them offensively, whether it is big-company-to-small-company, small-company-to-big-company, or government-entity-to-big-company.
So Apple wants a slice of the pie eh?
Bring out iTunes Australia already you wankers. Then we'll talk.
The CSIRO (or ANU, can't remember) developed SYNROC, a safe material in which to store nuclear waste all the way back in 1978. It has been ignored by the US, because Australia has a patent on it. I spose companies decided that unlike public safety, wireless networking couldn't wait till the patent expired...
"ABC News is reporting that six U.S. computer companies (Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft and Netgear,)"
Um, only half of those companies sell computers.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
And that gaping chasm, its carpeted with the bodies of dead spies!
Yay me!
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!
Why doesn't someone (say, congress) overhaul the patent system; and implement a system based on performance (quality) and not patents registered (quantity)?
,which could be measured by how much the patents benefit society in general, (ie. stopping MS/Dell/Netgear/HP/Big Corps royally screwing Joe Nobody).
/. crowd would make a good 3rd party, we seem both knowlegable and opinionated...
Perhaps, *all* the money from the patent fee can be channeled to an independant, unbiased and perhaps unnamed third party, who then redistribute the money back to the patent company based on performance
If the patent office continued to allow stupid patents (eg, MS's "human skin as an electrical conductor" patent) under this system, then the 3rd party would consider this "a burden on advancing technology" and block funding. The patent fee money would just sit in the bank, waiting until the patent office stop screwing us over, or die of malnourishment.
Heh, the
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
My sister was there for part of that. Lots of nice people but very little money.
When are we going to have a beer?
Australia is not the USA. I doubt the CSIRO has much influence on purchasing descisions throughout other agencies or departments of the Australian government.
At least we can all be thankful that Al Gore didn't patent the internet! :p
Beat the Yanks at their own stupid IP game. Go the Aussies!
Zilch
Ciao
to $5 dollars per chipset! or $5.50!
Sending a man to the moon is not an invention my backwards american friend. Plus Star Trek is not real and even they never explored all the planets during any of their episodes unless you count the Voyager episode where Paris does warp 10 and occupies all points in the universe at the same time, even so, that was a fictional invention.
The lightbulb was invented by an Sir Joseph Wilson Swan AND Thomas Eddison at the same time in their respective countries.
Nikola Tesla invented AC power, a Serbian.
The rest I can concede, but there is enough there to show that the US didn't invent half the shit you listed. So you are either trying to bullshit us or you didn't know better.
Jonathanjk.com
Reform is only going to happen if patents become more of a bother than a boon to the microsofts and lucent's of this world.
Everytime a patent screws the big guys is to be applauded, everytime it screws the little guy it is to be deplored. There is nothing inconsistent about it.
welcome our starship patent destroyers.
Unless I'm missing something, I don't believe there could be a better example of how patents are only useful in the hands of the large companies, and not the small ones. If anything, this will help the pro freedom from patents movement in Europe by providing great examples and arguments.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Is there really a point in comparing the current government to past governments and saying that hey, at least they're not as bad as in the past? The point is, the current government is screwed up, no matter how much better or worse they are than previous governments. They're certainly far from perfect...
Internet: [nope]
Tim Berners-Lee is credited with having created the World Wide Web while he was a researcher at the European High-Energy Particle Physics lab, the Conseil Européenne pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN), in Geneva, Switzerland. A tool was needed to enable collaboration between physicists and other researchers in the high energy physics community.
There's always internet / gopher / the WWW. I think most people these days see the worldwideweb as the internet. That's not american. If memory serves me TCP/IP might have been MIT (MIT did email first, right?)
Sent Man to Moon: [nope]
That's not an invention. Nor is sending them to Mars, Pluto, Iraq or any other place. It's an accomplishment though.
Atomic Bomb: [nope]
On August 2, 1939, just before the beginning of World War II, Albert Einstein wrote to then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein and several other scientists told Roosevelt of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify uranium-235, which could be used to build an atomic bomb. It was shortly thereafter that the United States Government began the serious undertaking known then only as "The Manhattan Project."
December 1938 - Two German scientists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, demonstrate nuclear fission. I guess the Germans didn't by random motion started to purify uranium-235. America was the first one to fabricate a bomb, and use it. Einstein by the way, is a german, not an american.
Hydrogen Bomb: [nope]
Edward Teller invented that thing. Moved out of europe cause of the war.
Edward Teller was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1908, Dr. Teller received his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Although his early training was in chemical physics and spectroscopy, Edward Teller has made substantial contributions to such diverse fields as nuclear physics, plasma physics, astrophysics, and statistical mechanics.
Have explored all the planets: [nope]
There's billions of planets out there. Never happened. If you ment sent sattelites flying past the planets in our solar system, then you have a remote chance of being right.. can't find the data on the internet, but at least russia, europe and japan send out space probes as well.
I'm getting tired..
The Computer GUI: [right]
AC: see other post: [wrong]
Electric lightbulb: [wrong] - patented by Philips, netherlands.
Motion pictures: [wrong]
The next step was to use sequence photography to create moving pictures, and the first successful device for sequence photography was Eadweard Muybridge, who took 12 photographs of the horse 'Abe Edgington' in 1878 and demonstrated how this represented a mere half second of motion. His Zoopraxiscope device of 1879 can be seen in the Kingston Museum, Surrey, UK.
Inspired by Muybridge's work, the Frenchman Etienne-Jules Marey analysed high-speed motion and throughout the early 1890s, helped by developments such as sensitized paper superseding glass plates and general improvements in the equipment available, produced chronophotographic sequence cameras and demonstrated the principles which formed the basis of the cinematography.
So, you're wrong. you can't help it though, it was your education that is flawed.
The real reason why it was possible that these major players got together was this:
They all do some kind of "I can use these patents of yours, you can use these patents of mine" with each other.
Here comes CSIRO. Not interested in such thing, as it is of no use for them, CSIRO declined.
My enemy's enemy is my friend. Let's show this kid what happens, if he doesn't want to play along.
Had CSIRO agreed to some patent exchange, we would have never heared the claim that this patent is not valid. If this patent is valid or not did not matter for the formation of this opposition group.
But he's not. American probes have flown past the Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; orbited the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn; landed on the Moon and Mars; landed with human crew on the Moon. In addition, a European probe landed on Titan after having been carried to the Saturn system by an American mothership.
AFAIK no American probe has ever been to Pluto, or landed anywhere except the Moon and Mars (oh, and the asteroid NEAR wound up on).
Soviet spaceprobes have landed on the Moon, Venus and Mars, and achieved a robotic sample return from the Moon. However, I don't think they ever launched any missions to the outer solar system or to Mercury.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Internet? Arguable: packet switching was
done by a team at NPL Teddington.
Man to Moon? Take Von Braun out and it's
a different story.
A Bomb? Frisch and Peierls at Birmingham
and later Liverpool did a lot of the
theoretical work, and Birmingham Chemistry
Dept did the UF6 gas diffusion method. The
Tube Alloys project might have produced a
viable device, although America certainly
contributed the engineering and exploitation
technologies.
H Bomb I don't know enough about.
Most of the rest arose in several places at about
the same time, emerging from well-established
science.
ian
I think the reason why people became "pro-patent in this case" is that the CSIRO actually use patents the way they were intended to be used. They invent something, then re-invest the money back into current research. They have been quietly doing this under various names since 1916 and have a very impressive record of practical innovation and basic research.
"...the ideas there such as OFDM and FEC, etc. are actually not all that ingenious." - CSIRO developed and patented the idea a decade ago, hindsight is always 20/20. As you say, anyone with a "deep understanding" could have thought of the idea but the fact remains that nobody did.
"I oppose anyone who wants to use them offensively" - The corporations that are now whinning about paying $4 per chip are the same ones that pushed hard for US IP laws to be adopted under the recently signed free trade agreement. To me, (an Aussie), it is poetic justice when a "non-profit" can screw a cartel of the largest "for-profits" with thier own rules. Before the 1980's corporations used to buy CSIRO patents for a pitance and the Australian public would watch as Agri-corps and Drug-pushing-corps turned govt funded research into a private cash cow. The use of licenses to make "for-profits" pay for basic research is one of CSIRO's greatest innovations.
Some examples of IP idiocy in Australia, patent for the wheel, Ugg boots.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This graph shows that the Howard economic rhetoric is completely false:/ mikesgraph/
http://www.greens.org.au/blog/ElectionBlog/images
Jeremy
Melbourne, Australia
Jabber Australia
So how do you explain the Dingo?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think an important reason this patent is generally thought more "reasonable" here is because more people here can understand the details of software patents than those of other fields. It is usually prudent to assume that a new thing is ingenious until your knowledge says otherwise. That's why people like RMS and Knuth limit their anti-patent compaign to software, while some experts in other fields may oppose other kinds of patents.
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.
Those companies don't pay the 4.00 per chipset, that gets passed down to...us, the consumer. Those army of lawyers it will take to bust this patent...paid for by...us. If they lose and have to pay the 4.00 and for the army of lawyers, well, just raise the prices a bit. And if they win, does anyone think they will lower the price?
What these companies should do to get around the patent is to pool their money and develop a *better* Open Source alternative to the patent in question.
If they did that, that 4.00 in savings still probably wouldn't make it down to the consumer level, but maybe some developing country could use the OS tech to make some free chipsets where it would benefit someone in those countries through lower prices to the consumer.
Yeah, I ain't going to hold my breath, but that's what these compaines should be doing.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
I think the Whitehouse invented some type of weapon called "bullshit" and are hoping the rest of the planet won't notice.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So much crap is tied up with patents that basic research is almost impossible without licensing. I don't know how badly it affects the electronics side of things, but the life sciences side of CSIRO is being crippled by agribusiness patents on gene technology etc.
First and foremost, the world wide web is NOT the internet. This is an unfortunate, yet common misconception. Additionally, Berners-Lee didn't announce the project until the 90s.
Secondly, the initial work done for a "internet" was done by DARPA/ARPA, a division of the US government in the late 1960's.
TCP/IP was introduced in the early 1980's(1983) to be exact, and later included in BSD.
So next time you want to bring someone down for being poorly educated, make sure you're not a pot calling a kettle black.
I for one welcome our new australian wireless overlords :)
Did anyone read the second article? "One former executive of a top-ranked computer maker alleges the organization is asking a $4 licensing fee for each chipset using OFDM technology, amounting to up to 70 percent of a chipset's price" Personally, I think CSIRO's patents should be observed. But I found very little except this tidbit to explain the actions of the companies brining the action. Big groups of competing companies don't band together to bring an expensive legal action unless they have a very clear incentive. (speculating here) It may very well be that this step is being taken because while $4 doesn't sound like very much it is inhibiting putting wireless technology in very simple low priced devices or devices with a very low margin? Does anyone know if CSIRO was approached about altering the price structure and refused? A $4 skim off the top of a $1500 centrino-equipped laptop isn't much. But a $4 skim off a $12 USB Wireless fob is pretty harsh.
Latest ABC report: six U.S. computer companies (Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft and Netgear) have teamed and applied for a new patent entitled: "An automated system to effect the removal of, through exploitation of flaws in patent systems, patents inconveniently held by competitors." As soon as the patent is passed, they will use it against the CSIRO. Shortly after, M$ stab the remaining five companies in the back by using the new patent against itself which will start a chain of events leading to the unfortunate early implosion of the universe.
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
I expected my post to be modded funny and not insightful
/. gets modded insightful as quickly as the latest google gossip. Oh how I beat myself in shame to have been born in this geographical region...
Anything anti-American on
Now it is fairly obvious that it would be a good idea to split the data stream into a number of sub-streams, each transmitting on different frequencies (called subcarriers) at a lower rate. Since the data rate on each carrier is lower, the delay spread of the multiple paths will not be able to span that many data symbols, and equalization would be easy. This is just FDM and has been around forever, but ordinary FDM requires filters that filter out the signal of each subcarrier, which means having a lot of subcarriers is not very practical, and there has to be some bandgap between the frequency bands of neighboring subcarriers to account for non-ideal performance of filters, so some bandwidth waste is inevitable. Now the engineer ponders for a moment on the mathematical formula of the combined signal, and finds that the filters can simply be replaced with FFT and inverse FFT. Voila! OFDM is invented!
The rest of the patent combines OFDM with FEC, high-rate modulation (such as QAM), etc. These are insanely obvious to any EE student.
That's it. Of course there are subtle problem like frequency stability that are sometimes complex to solve well, but the main idea is not that magical. It is just good engineering with common sense. Personally I don't think it is fair for them to disallow others from using this general idea just because they do it first.
As for why no one thought of it earlier, probably there just isn't that much demand for 10+Mbps wireless data transmission before 1993. Also, however trivial an idea is, there just has to be someone who thought of it first and took the trouble of actually publishing and/or using it, and given the current climate there is a high probability that he will try to patent it, be him CSIRO or anyone else.
those bloody yankees are at it again... time to push that "wheel" patent we have... make GMC pay up .. hehe
In my opinion, no single entity should be able to monopolize on an idea
So whats the incentive for a company to spend millions of dollars and years of research if they cnanot get exclusive rights to make their money back and a profit?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Marketing and Business processes were the two major contributions (ok not an invention - happy now). See HBR and BA&H series on Taylor, Ford et. all since 1870s. You can invent all the products you want but unless they are well marketed - case point Xerox and Microsoft. One was an innovator and the other was a marketing machine. You know who succeded.
Why? Well they aquired the company Radiata a few years back that worked closely with the CSIRO group responsible for this patent. For 400 million dollars in shares (at the cisco share value at the time) they bought a preliminary 802.11a design.I presume part of the deal was full access to this patent...
D.
When tesla invented AC power, he was indeed an american citizen.
You are wrong. Nicola Tesla became a citizen after he developed two phase power generation.
Of course, when poor, struggling George Westinghouse asked Tesla to give up his royalties on the patent, so that he could press on with his battle against Edison, Tesla was a US citizen, and as a US citizen, he was soon to learn the 'American Way' as Westinghouse went on to become one of America's richest men and little Nicolai died penniless.
-- Karma: Bad. Fucking stupid slashdot mods
And if it is true that this guy was first to figure out that 1) there is order in non-coding DNA and 2) this order can be used to gain access to coding DNA, then I don't see what's wrong with this patent in itself.
Because patents are supposed to be granted for inventions of utility, and not discoveries of nature?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Uhm... those weren't buzzwords. Those are technical jargon. They proposed a system for multipath mitigation, in a time when a lot of research was being done in exactly that area.
(Multi-pathing is the tendency of a radio wave of a given frequency to reflect or refract such that the different paths arrive at an antenna at slightly different times, interfering with each other. In an office setting, with lots of objects, this is a real problem.)
Several then-current techniques were mentioned, including spread-spectrum (which mitigates multipathing at the expense of more power spread over a broader range of frequencies), and directional antenna, which makes for a more expensive system.
Their coding techniques were ingenious at the time. It's a good, solid patent. I don't like the patent system, but if you gotta have patents, they should be more like this, and a lot less like gene patents, or math patents, or playing with a cat using a laser pointer, or pushing a kid on a swing "underdog"-- all patents which exist.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Lando: Wait, we had a deal!!
Vader: I have altered the deal..pray I do not alter it further.
Apparently, the Australian government didn't learn what happens when you make a "deal" with the Empire.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
From the abstract: "The present invention discloses a wireless LAN, a peer-to-peer wireless LAN, a wireless transceiver and a method of transmitting data, all of which are capable of operating at frequencies in excess of 10 GHz and in multipath transmission environments. " Current WLAN hardware operates in the 2.4-5.0GHz range, so shouldn't it be exempt?
coca-cola
rock 'n' roll
microprocessor
Internet
surfing
"CSIRO is a not-for-profit Australian Government organisation. Do all these companies really want to screw around with what is likely to be their biggest customer in Australia ?" Australia is a country of what? 25M people? That's a miniscule market smaller that California for crying out loud. The motivation behind spending millions on a patent fight is not to open up a tiny government market but to avoid the fees shelled out in the huge U.S., European and Asian markets.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Somehow I don't see Howard having the same kind of humanitarian crisis of conscience that Fraser did...
I believe the relevant point the poster was making was that while CSIRO are well respected by Australians, the Federal Government does not hold them in such high esteem.
i don't read slashdot anymore.
They didn't call it junk DNA for nothing. Most genetic scientists didn't think anything of the other 95% of the DNA because the coding part made up 5%. The rest must be junk, right? Wrong. Simons saw patterns in the non coding DNA and decided to prove to himself and others that nature could be so wasteful.
The non coding DNA often referred to as `junk DNA` was discovered by a maverick Kiwi Immunologist to perform a function (junk DNA provided markers to indicate abnormalities). Dr Malcolm Simons (I love it when Australians claim successful Kiwis for their own). Recognised as a world class leader in Immunology, Simons although untrained in genetics made a unique set of discoveries from 1987 onwards. He recognised that ...
This has immense implications for the diagnosis of human disease. What happened after the discovery, the taking on of a (ruthless) business partner, the awarding of patents on the subsequent business fallout, the ill health of Dr Simons (Multiple Myeloma a fatal cancer) and the IP enforcement by Genetic Technologies is documented in the ABC TV Catalyst, Genius of Junk (DNA), aired 10 July 2003 on Australian television.
Some interesting references:
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
This is where the patent portfolio model breaks down. CSIRO is (AFAIK) a purely research organisation and therefore has no need to trade patents with others. It needs the revenues that the patents generate to fund further research instead. So when it holds a patent the big co's need this is what happens!
CSIRO is not respected much at all, and usually gets cut back more with each budget - most Australian innovations have to be sold overseas before anyone local will consider investing in them.
Also, it's early days of the Australia-US free trade deal, so a CSIRO patent will not be worth considering rocking the boat with. The other factor is that it can be considered within the realm of foreign affairs, and the minister for that deparment is in the position due to past acheivements of his grandfather, and can not be considered competant (as a distraction for being caught out in a lie to cover incompetance this week he actually said that previous Australian governments run by another party were associated with Nazis! It ended up on the front page of every major newspaper!).
To sum up - CSIRO is on it's own, the government doesn't care, it's only technology after all and we can buy that from China as far as they are concearned. The minor party in the coalitition (which has farmers as it's main constituancy) do recognise the value of CSIRO but don't have much say in things, and the opposition party doesn't care much one way or the other.
Back to synroc - it works by incorporation of the material instead of encapsulation, the radioactive elements form stable compounds with other materials in synroc. Quite a feat, when you consider that the decay products (which can still be radioactive) can be isotopes of a very wide range of elements - so it's designed to form stable compounds whith just about any element.
Unfortunately the existing solution is just to throw the stuff in drums and stick it underground in a facility where people have committed fraud in the safety reports (check this years press on Yucca Mountain) - which is OK in the short term but doesn't solve any long term problems.
And if you want to go way back... stone tools.
Many more here: http://www.whitehat.com.au/Australia/Inventions/In ventionsA.html
Not bad for a country half the age and with less than one tenth the population of the US!
I should buy some cement.
Bugger off ya bloody bastards! Leave our IP alone. Or we will sik an army of drop bears (killer koalas) on ya!
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
As to Simons' supposed genius, it's my understanding that not everybody in the genetics world accepts his accounts of things, to say the least.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Dont sweat about it. Its something I think NZ'rs would recognise as not getting credit for producing top minds.
it's my understanding that not everybody in the genetics world accepts his accounts of things, to say the least.
History will bear this one out. How many times do we get leaps in knowledge by the *experts* as opposed to out of field empiricists?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Word is that this is a counter suit.
CSIRO has had the patent for more than a decade, but the only company that has paid royaties is CISCO.
Under the guidance of a business development whiz CSIRO is now trying to get more return from its patent portfolio.
So they sent a bill to some of the big boys.
They don't want to pay, so now they are ganging up on an impoverished quasi-government agency.
So at least we would know where we stand
But John Howard seems to prefer Australians in general use chalk instead of lube.
Yay me!
Remember, a patent is a government granted monopoly for a time period to allow the patent holder to both recoup their costs and to make a profit out of inventing the idea that has been patented.
SIGH. More Hypercapitalist revisionist psychobabble. Go and polish your GOP membership badge.
Patents were actually put into the US Constitution because they allowed an inventor to take advantage of a monopoly position (and note, this is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT than saying "allows recovery of costs and the pursuit of profit"), in exchange for DISCLOSING HIS MANUFACTURING PROCESS.
The inventor is given a protected zone, in which HE (not the GOVERNMENT) can try to wrangle a profit from the invention. In fair exchange, the public is shown his invention.
The point of the US patent system was to STOP inventors from hoarding "trade secrets" and thus denying overall social benefit (since such secrets can be lost). Saying it's to promote the inventor's wealth is a modern fantasy constructed by a greed of equally fantastic proportions.
P.S. You might well note that most software patents fail on these grounds since there's no disclosure that hasn't happened already. These patents are simply taking advantage of the general citizenship malaise in America, and are simply staking a claim upon what's already in the Public Domain -- most of the software procedures are prior art, squared!
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]