China Files Case Against Intel's Wireless Network

Krishna Dagli writes "China has launched a case against American chipmaker Intel's near-monopoly on encryption standards for wireless local area network (WLAN) equipment, state press reported Monday."

Comments

Re:china? whaa?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

since when does china care about patent law?

Nothing to do with patent law.

Short version. IEEE submitted 80211i, China submitted WAPI to ISO to be international wireless encryption standards. IEEE won, WAPI lost. China is complaining that IEEE did something bad during the lead up to the voting process. No news sources are reporting what that something was as far as I can see.

So we have nebulous claims of interference in the ISO process. No more, no less.

(I'm not sure whether I dislike/distrust Intel or China more)

Re:Will cause trouble in DC.

[eraser.cpp]

Colin Powell spoke with Chinese trade officials a while back and got them to halt a program that would have required WiFi equipment being sold in China to support WAPI. The program also would have required foreign companies to partner with a Chinese firm before entering the market.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/04/05/HNbarret tochina_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld .com/article/04/04/05/HNbarrettochina_1.html

FTA: "The U.S. government has also weighed in on the issue. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, sent a letter to senior Chinese government officials in March expressing concern over the implementation of China's WLAN standard and that the move created a dangerous precedent for using standards as a barrier to international trade."

can't trust wireless encryption anyway

[penguin-collective]

It doesn't really matter what wireless encryption standards one uses, you can't trust them anyway. First of all, the companies involved have already demonstrated their incompetence with WEP. Second, I think at this point you have to assume that any encryption that's encoded in a chip has a backdoor in it and that a significant number of people will know about it.

If you want secure wireless communications, you have to use software encryption implemented in open source software.

Re:NAFTA?

[dryeo]

While everything you say is true, NAFTA has still been more advantageous for America. Just look at the softwood lumber dispute (http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/HET/Softwood/). Basiclly America stole $5billion through illegal tarifs on lumber and even with losing court case after court case refused to be honourable. They have finally decide to give back a couple of billion but it still leaves a bad taste about America and how they honour treaties.
Also there are very few large Canadian firms anymore as they all have been bought out by American firms.
What I really laugh at are the poor Australians who even after seeing how America keeps its word went and signed a free trade agreement.