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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.
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
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
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
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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?"
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).
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.
'""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.
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.
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 ]
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.
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.
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!
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.
RTFP (p=patent). The patent is NOT for wireless networks. It is for high speed (ie. 10GHz) wireless networks using a specific technology to give those high speeds.