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CSIRO Wireless Patent Reaffirmed In US Court
An anonymous reader writes ""The CSIRO has won a landmark US legal battle against Buffalo Technology, under which it could receive royalties from every producer of wireless local area network (WLAN) products worldwide." From the article: "The patent, granted to CSIRO in 1996, encompasses elements of the 802.11a/g wireless technology that is now an industry standard. It stems from a system developed by CSIRO in the early '90s, 'to exchange large amounts of information wirelessly at high speed, within environments such as offices and homes,' said a CSIRO spokeswoman."
Well, as long as I can continue to surf the internet while on the john, I really don't care who owns the wireless patent.
/* No Comment */
Honestly, if anything will scream for patent reform, it's when the cities with municipal wi-fi start getting sued...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
(Source: a previous press release about the case)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
How can they collect royalties from Buffalo for every wireless device sold in the world? Does buffalo technology own the patent for that? Wouldn't that mean that companies like Netgear would have to pay them to manufacture wireless gear? I thought that the 802.11 standard was just that, not a patent.
20. Patents are 20 years long.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I really think that having the CSIRO earning money for every WLAN access point is a reason why the patent system is a Good Thing (tm). Not greedy corporations making money, just an honest government research institute getting credit for their work.
Just look at their research on the new Air Guitar for example
Well that will be a good revenue stream for this underfunded Australia Government Department...
they would use this finding to stop the manufacture of all infringing devices in the world, except the ones that are made in Australia. Seeing as the charter of the CSIRO is to produce research which exclusively benefits Australian business, that's what they should be doing.
How we know is more important than what we know.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5487069.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5487069.pdf
Its more or less a means of generating multi pathed radio signals with CRC checking from packet data. So long as they're not greedy with the royalties, more power to em.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
WTF, mate?
Look at trends and guess where things must go.
Patent some product which is not yet obvious to everyone, but will be as trends move that way.
Do some minimal development of the "idea".
Wait.
Now when everyone is using your "idea" which is now obvious (without your help).
Cash out by suing everyone.
Don't knock the CSIRO. At one of their 'Double Helix' club meetings I learned how to program my calculator to generate a Mandelbrot set. Might not be so much of a feat to you TI fanboys, but this was on an HP-42S (which I still own & use) - a non-graphing calculator.
Later I was placed in a summer program where I learned matlab whilst working at a steel testing lab.
Cool stuffs.
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A technology will have a very hard time being standardized if someone holds the patent. However, in this case and others, nobody realized the patent issue when it was being pushed as a standard. Many years later, when everyone is using it, the patent holder comes out and claims the ownership and starts to collect payments. It's too late to correct the mistake. If the patent holder had been saying so from the beginning, it would not have had a chance to grow such a market value.
I think there should be some laws to restrict such a practice.
More precisely: I believe US patents are valid 20 years from *date of application*. Also if you publish your own patentable idea or sell a patentable product, I believe you have one year to file an application. If you want to litigate you must notify the public that your patent is "pending." You can then litigate once the patent has been issued. IANAL; consult one before you start the patent process.
LLM
Annoy a Conservative...
'""The CSIRO has won...'
Incorrectly starting quotes with two (2) quotation marks has been patented by me! I'd like my $0.15 in royalties please.
In the long run isnt this going to prove bad for CSIRO? In the future as other "standards" are adopted will anyone want the CSIRO involved and will any of their achievements be looked at as something to include rather than something to avoid? While I understand their reasoning I really think this was very shortsighted and could easily push the CSIRO into the relm of being virtually ignored by much of that standards community. I sat in on IEEE meetings for the 802.11g standard and saw shocked to learn the truth about how "standards" work and how many companies try quietly to slip in their own usually proprietary idea's to they and gain leverage after the standard is adopted. I guess it's no different than politicians tacking unrelated affinity pork to bills and resolutions, maybe I just dont understand all the facts but it seems sad that organizations who's own bylaws state their purpose is the national and/or common good appear to pander to the same tactics as the corporate world.
I do have one question though, where was CSIRO when the standards for 802.11a/b/g were being created? And why didnt they speak up?
Considering the rate of innovation these days, a 20 year patent period is far too long. A good first step for patent reform would be to reduce the length of patents by half or more.
what sig?
IANAL but I thought that if you are immune to suits you also cannot bring them. I know from experience that if you have diplomatic immunity you cannot be sued in a country of your accredited residence (nice), but you also cannot bring suit there. Also did I read correctly that this suit started when MS Intel et al brought suit to have the patent invalidated and that the Australians simply counter sued and then won. Talk about putting a foot in it! The article left much unsaid. The whole thing seems odd for a govt lab to get into. Why such a long time to protect their rights?
Interested to see how this shakes out. That district in East Texas is, I believe, famous for civil suits against companies; that is, if it is the one I am thinking of...
Does anyone have a link with more depth on this? It is a great business story and more to it than meets the eye.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Although this is certainly a big victory for CSIRO, the battle over this patent is far from over. Almost all "big" patent suits are appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which is the appellate court that has jurisdiction over patent appeals. The Federal Circuit reverses district court decisions (like the decision mentioned in the story) about 60% of the time. It also takes several years to move through the appellate process, which means it will be quite some time before Buffalo pays a cent to CSIRO.
After reading this i asked my self: why would the royalties of my wifi router go to CSIRO? as long as i know the US court doesnt rule over Europe, so i'd like to say how that "worlwide application" comes to. They sure wont pay for them in China 2c
When my Karma level reaches 0 I feel in piece with the Universe
Even more specifically, it's 20 years from the date of application or 17 years from teh date of issue, whichever is longer. This helps prevent entities form being shorted if it takes ten years to work through the patent system before being granted.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Who's liable here? 802.11 chipset manufacturers? OEMs who include those chipsets in their products (wireless routers, 802.11-equipped laptops and handhelds)?
Basically all countries of the world will be assisting Australians pay their taxation bill and that works for me.
Capitalism at its best. Thank you all very much...
A Happy Aussie
Before the end of the 1940s CSIRO's predecessor developed and test ran the world's "fifth electronic stored program computer", later known as CSIRAC. In 1954 widely venerated Prime Minister Robert Menzies decided that CSIRO should drop research on computers in favour of cloud seeding. (The back stories would fill a book without getting to Pig Iron Bob presenting my undergraduate degree.)
Then in the early 1980s microprocessor technology faciliated the emergence of a promising embryonic computer hardware industry, but quiz king turned science minister Barry Jones announced that we had already missed the boat, and corporate misdeals soon mopped up the few threatening survivors. (I prepared supplements covering 40+ local maunfacturers for Australian Micro Computerworld in each of its two years of publication, 1983-84, before it was swept away by the PCWorld/Macworld tidal waves, having put on a government-supported professional development conference for those manufacturers in 1983.)
That's all folks!
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
That's US. Did CSIRO file a US patent, or just an Aussie patent?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I bet Al Gore* is jealous.
The opposition must have had technological morons as lawyers. There's got to be prior art on this. Modulated radio itself is just a way to "exchange large amounts of information wirelessly at high speed" -- a wireless network is simply a specific use of radio, and it's not as if wireless networking itself didn't exist before the 1990s. Military communications spring immediately to mind -- TADIL/Link 11 has been around since AT LEAST the 80s. Just because you use change it to "home or office" use doesn't mean something new has been created (or thought of, in this case). It's like patenting invisible pink unicorn saddles**.
* Yeah, I know the Al Gore thing is a misquote, it's just a joke.
** Yeah, I also know the invisible pink unicorn would NEVER allow itself to be saddled.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The number of cases where a patent holder waits until a patent is worth something before doing anything are numerous: GIF and RSA to name but two well known cases.
It is similar for OpenBSD and CARP (vs Cisco's VRRP) - even though they've asked Cisco if their are ok, Cisco not responding does not give them the green light - and to this day I'm not aware of Cisco responding.
In the end, the only way you can settle a dispute/question over "do you infringe" is in court.
As for CSIRO, well, they came up with the idea years before anyone else and have successfully patented a very worthwhile technology. To me that makes them a very useful research and development centre, probably the kind of place you want to be involved with so that you can share in the research and royalties from future patents.
Further, there is nothing about patents that means they cannot be used "for the common good". In this case maybe it is more fool of those that sued CSIRO in the first place.
It would be nice if most of the replies on this thread just "got over it".
An Aussie patent only applies in Aussieland, not in the US. Ergo, a ruling in US court means they have a US patent.
IANAL, but if the vendors currently already pay the CSIRO a license for its use, wouldn't this imply two things?
1) From the TLJ article, Buffalo was not paying a license and were therefore a suit was raised against them in Feb 2005; but
2) That Dell and Intel are paying the license and are trying to invalidate it so that they don't have to - and therefore raised the suit in May 2005 to that purpose - to which CSIRO have now countersued
It's Australian for "OWNED"
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
IIRC (and IANotAL) It's actually 20 years from the date of application, but there is this thing Patent Term Extension which increases the 20 years if the USPTO takes their own sweet time about dealing with the patent. I think the first one is that, after three years of pendency, you get time added until they first take up your case.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
here ya go sparky
Aren't you supposed to be out harshly interrogating detainees or something? Or wait, this week it's running propoganda astroturf blogs. What are you, on break or something? Go earn your check.
According to CSIRO they have been selling licences to companies it's just an issue now because it's now that this "Buffalo Technology" company has decided it doesn't want to pay.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
George Bush has just declared Australia a terrorist state...details at 11.
I'd love to see them try to sue Apple.
In February 1995, an Apple petition to open up more spectrum was approved. The public now has 10 Mhz for license-free use. Apple does not own it. Everyone must use equipment designed for the band.
...
VHR would provide the capacity of moving information at rates exceeding 20 Mbps. These would be primarily in-building networks, but the development of these systems is just in the formative stages.
The CSIRO is a department of the Australian Government.
Does Australian Prime Minister John Howard really think the American Government is going to standby and let him gauge, threat and intimidate US corporations? I don't think so. Why don't you write and tell him?
http://www.pm.gov.au/email.cfm
Howard is a notorious Bush brown-noser anyway. In that linked paper last week he called for America to stay in Iraq. Ok for him. It's Americans doing the dying. Watch out John. If you upset George, he might not invite you to any more BBQs. Then you won't have any friends left at all.
Later they set up wireless networks in several major cities including San Francisco. They planned to go nationwide. These were working networks and you could buy a subscription and a Metricom Ricochet modem. You could surf the net at 128kbps while driving in your car, provided you were in their coverage area. Their network NOC was in Houston with a backup Network Operations Center in CA.
If Metricom's patents applied, they could pound CSIRO's ass all night long with them.
Does the patent affect the new standard? If so, can the standard be changed prior to ratification to avoid a second round of payments? I've got no problem with CSIRO's patent, but it would seem like a competent standards org should avoid patented material, or have a good reason why they can't.
Use your Blackberry Pearl as a Bluetooth Modem in OS X
Sounds like you tried hard.
Thanks for the effort.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
And just to show off, they're now using wireless technology in their WIS (Wearable Instrument Shirt). Its the shirt every air guitarist wants.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
2) The big boys worried about the patents as the technology exploded (or perhaps CSIRO started to agitate in some way as wireless went mainstream) So the big boys tried to claim that CSIRO patents were invalid in a suit.
3) CSIRO then said: "You can't sue us; we are immune. And, besides, our patents are good as gold. Ante up."
4) The big boys pressed suit nonetheless and determined that CSIROs claim of immunity was invalid.
5) Then CSIRO said: "So, if it is a fight you want, now WE can sue since we are not immune after all. See you in court."
6) Now they have beaten Buffalo, which is the pointy end of a legal spear against the big boys.
There is still a long way to go before CSIRO will see any money, but IMHO they are on track to get something (particularly if their demands stay modest).
It is a good yarn with high stakes. I thought TFA was thin. I would still like to se a good in-depth Wired-mag-type story on this. Any shouts?
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
IIRC from long ago, wasn't the original "Ethernet" a radio-based system? Hence the CDMA, since there was only the one channel/frequency for all transactions. Also, hence the name "ether"net, from the early 20th century fancy that light and wireless travelled through an invisible "ether". Some clever fellow then copied that design for a cable system, giving us the original coax networking.(And without a patent infringement suit!)
After that, what would any research bring to the wireless aspect of the design that isn't under the category of "obvious"? Checksum was a feature of original ethernet. So was collsion detection and retransmission. MAC addressing. The only really original bits I can think of in WiFi is the security - however, not a lot different from HTTPS and already covered by other patents?
For example, if someone already makes a washer and a dryer, wouldn't making a combined "washer-dryer" be obvious rather than patentable? (If they could make it iron and fold too, THEN I'd consider it a patentable device!) Should be pretty easy to do with a pair of front-loading appliances... I don't see where bring wireless, or limited-range wireless, or power-limited wireless, falls in the category of "innovation".
It should be noted that the CSIRO had a spin-off called RADIATA, and that they had access to this patent. RADIATA was later bought by CISCO, so it seems to me at a first look that CISCO is protected from this patent.. So Buy CISCO....
D.
Thanks for the link! CSIRO was indeed listed:
802.11a
CSIRO,
Telecommunications & Industry Physics, Cnr Vimiera & Pembroke Roads, Marsflied NSW 2122 PO Box 76, Epping NSW 1710 Australia Contact: Denis Redfern-General Manager, CSIRO Business Development and Commercialization, P.O. Box 93, North Ryde, NSW 1670 Australia TEL: +61-2-94908261, FAX: +61-2-94908164, EMAIL: Denis.Redfern@csiro.au
5,487,069 (US) 4-Dec-1998
yes
19-Oct-2004
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs