Slashdot Mirror
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."
(Source: a previous press release about the case)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
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"
it's called precedent. By winning this one, every other company will pay rather than fight, because the judges will refer to the buffalo case.
lounge around on the blue couch
RTFA... to answer all your questions, YES. They (CSIRO) own the patent, which evidently covers technology that lead to the standard and would mean royalties from most wireless (802.11a/g) devices worldwide, and they are going after the others (Netgear was specifically mentioned) as well...seriously, RTFA!
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
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?"
Precedents only cover the actual jurisdiction of the issuing court.
More to the point, precedents only cover questions of law - it does not cover questions of fact. As between Buffalo and the CSIRO the answers to the questions of fact are set in stone (subject to any appeal) not because of precedent, but because of the principles of res judicata and issue estoppel. As between anybody else (who is not claiming some rights through Buffalo) and the CSIRO, there is nothing to prevent a court from reaching entirely opposite conclusions on the facts, since unlike precedent these two principles only apply between the parties to the original case. A court that reaches different conclusions on the facts may well find the patent is invalid (but note that I have not looked at the patent and have no idea what degree of validity it might have).
Because rightly or wrongly, a patent grants exclusive rights to make, sell or use an invention. The end users are infringing on the patent by using the technology, and unless they got explicit indemnification from the manufacturer, they can be sued.
The main reason that they probably won't get sued is because it's simply easier to extract a lot of money from a few manufacturers than tiny amounts of money from each of millions of users.
Never happen. Australia's semiconductor industry is too small (does it even exist?) to make this a realistic option.
More likely is the CSIRO takes its royalties from companies worldwide, and ploughs them into further research in this and other areas.
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.
the bigger picture
CSIRO has been "negotiating" licences for the patents with LOTS of copmnanies, including buffalo, dell, microsoft, HP, netgear etc etc etc.
Buffalo file for invalidation
CSIRO claimed immunity (worth a shot, but obviously failed)
then counter-sue for unpaid royalties.
So it sounds more complicated than it is. The counter-suit is the logical response to an invalidation suit.
and yeah, plenty of US companies to sue. don't have to worry about the rest of the world if you can sue them all in the US
lounge around on the blue couch
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 ]
An Aussie patent only applies in Aussieland, not in the US. Ergo, a ruling in US court means they have a US patent.
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
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.
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.
That is not what happened in this case. The patent holder was "holding back" in this case because they had no option. It was an Australian patent against a US corporation. Now that the FTA is in force, this has opened the opportunity not only for the Australian patent holder to enforce their patent in the US, but also for the US corporation to challenge the Australian patent in court. Guess what? The greedy US corportation challenged the CSIRO, an honorable scientific research entity, in court to have their patent invalidated. So naturally, as is required to retain a patent, the CSIRO had to defend their patent to keep it.
The CSIRO are good people. They do lots of good things for the good of not just Australia, but the World.
This court case was brought against them, the CSIRO, in an attempt to invalidate their rightful patent. If you do not defend your patent, you lose it.
So here we have a case where a money motivated corporation is trying to stomp on a scientific research entity (which only strives to further the state of the art), so that the corportation can make more money. Thankfully the scientific research entity came out on top.
There is patent abuse in this story, but it most certainly is NOT from the CSIRO. Thankfully that abuse failed.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?