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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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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 don't mind not having a government grant. I can get commercial funding. What I do object to is the govenment pumping money into the CSIRO when all they can produce for their efforts is a 2x2 static MIMO demo when we can produce a fully working 4x4 MIMO transmitter and receiver, and then going on about how brilliant their research is.
You see, the problem is, the CSIRO is fat on government grants, so they don't have to work hard to survive. The rest of us have to fight for commercial funding by doing great research and making stuff that works and is truly ready for commercialisation.
My previous post was a bit of a troll. The CSIRO does do some great work, it's just that most of it isn't in my area.
The thing about stealing ideas is a bit personal. Their wideband channel sounder is pretty much a carbon copy of something they saw on a tour of our institution. We were talking about our ideas, and they were saying that their approach was so much better, then next month they've got something that's a copy of ours.
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.
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...
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!
Here in New Zealand, the US tried to get NZ to overturn it's "no nuclear" policy, and as a "reward", we would have a free trade agreement with the US (the US wants to park it's nuclear powered submarines in our waters). The US got a polite "fuck off". Pretty much every economist and politician here seems to agree that a FTA with the states is a very bad idea.
Ciao
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.