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22 Companies Sued Over Wi-Fi Patents
Newer Guy writes "Wi-LAN, another patent holding company, has sued 22 companies that make or sell wireless routers. Defendants include Apple. Atheros, Belkin, Best Buy, Buffalo, Dell, HP, Intel, and Lenovo. Wi-LAN has a portfolio of more than 280 issued or pending patents." Of course the two patent suits were filed in Marshall, Texas.
Cisco (CSCO ticker) was not mentioned at all...
Rule of Acquisition #19: Satisfaction is Not guaranteed.
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, sue.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Another story more notable for what's missing than for what's included.
Cisco (who also owns Linksys) is missing from the list of companies, despite being one of the biggest players in the wi-fi market. If they have already licensed the patents in question, that is a very important detail that should be explored.
On the other hand, if Cisco has also been ignoring those patents, and the patent troll in question is not attacking Cisco, there is probably a very interesting reason.
Maybe if enough scumbag IP holding companies extort enough money out of big corporations, those corporations will lobby congress to get the patent laws changed.
Cause it sure looks like neither the best interests of the country and its citizens, nor general sanity are enough to get them to do anything. Here's hoping there's enough pressure from this to get some corruption going in our favor.
And, yes, I know that's naive.
I'm hesitant to ask if this vaguery was something the article introduced (due to lack of info) or if this is another case of "we won't tell you what you're infringing, but trust us that you are".
Skype is too convoluted... Now I'm reverse-engineering the Kyoto Protocol.
Patents.... Legalized Extortion for the 21's century.
How much more of this do we haveto have before everyone in big business realizes that it's all a bad idea?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wi-LAN was an early innovator in the field of wireless stuff. They weren't formed as a patent holding company. Unfortunately, they couldn't compete in the post 802.11 market, and slowly withered away. They were part of the team that developed the WiMAX standard, and did a lot of pioneering work with OFDM. A year or so ago, they finally gave up and sold the various pieces of the company off to various other companies... *cough* fujitsu *cough*. Blame them.
The basic idea behind a patent is to allow the patent holder "shelter time" to develop, market, sell, and profit from their new inventions.
How can a company claim damages if they haven't done the above? Patents are what they are, but it strikes me as just silly - you might be in violation of the patent, but how can you, as the patent holder, claim damages without any proof that loss has occurred?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If I were the judge I would throw this case out.
The onus of protecting rights should be on the holder of the rights.
The strategy of patent holders must not be to "lay dormant" allowing numerous companies to infringe for a decade, and then when the market reaches critical mass, appear from the shadows with lawsuits.
We've all seen this happen before of course, but in other areas of intellectual property, (Trademarks for example) it is the responsibility to prevent the mark from becoming 'commonly used'. Once it does, a trademark holder can lose the rights to the mark. There are many famous examples of this.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Didn't some other company try this business model. Wasn't the name something like SCO? Does anyone remember that company? =)
You're damned right they are boy! I bought them from some very smart people!
Pa, why don't we license them out then?
Because boy, its easier to just hold them in waiting until we think we can rob enough companies! If we license, we have to manage it! If we just sue, its a one time deal..
Pa...
Why are you the anti-christ?
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
I say this suit should be dismissed because of Laches. WiFi has been out for quite a while, and the patent holder has not sought law suits sooner. Therefore, they slept on their rights.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Specifically, require all patent related cases to route through a centralized system in washington D.C.
Multiple courthouses/justices are fine, even keep the status quo with their method of appointment, but the cases (primary and appeals) filed should be randomly assigned to a given judge's court.
Removing the ability of troll companies to shop for particularly corrupt or incompetent forums should help reign in part of the problem and bring some regularity or balance to the overall system.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I work for one of the companies named in their lawsuits. Out of curiosity I checked out wi-lan's home page.
:/
They have a link to "Litigation" dead center in their page top nav bar. It's good to know they take it seriously
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
What the patents actually are of, and when they were filed. Some friends and I setup and brainstormed in late 97 and early 98 about the possibility of wireless networking using the 900 MHz and the 2.4 GHz range. I saw the first consumer devices come out around 2000 or so. If I have documentation of this, and the patent was filed later, I wonder if I can file a prior art thing?
Enough of this. Change the damn law in TX. I hope these patent trollers get their come-uppins.
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
I do not understand why retailers can be sued. I would think that if patent voilations have been made all the blame should rest on the manufacturers not the stores that are unwittingly selling the devices.
I must confess to being confused by that one. I understand (and abhor patent trolls) suing the manufacturers for not licensing the technology, but the storefront? Just going after someone with deep-pockets, or what? It's not actually a tenant of US law that you, as a seller, have to verify that all your wares are correctly licensed with clear patents/copyrights is it? How could a store ever be sure that all the electronic components in, say, the computers it sells are dispute-free?
"While we prefer to resolve patent infringement through business discussions, we have consistently maintained that litigation was always a possibility when negotiations do not result in a license within a reasonable time," Chief Executive Jim Skippen said in a statement.
Translation:
Bow down before the one you serve, you're gonna get what you deserve.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I was thinking the same thing. Now if Wi-LAN had been defending their stuff all along they might have something. And pending patents are NOT patents. The pending ones could be thrown out.
And so it continues ... stupid patent laws killing all technological innovation in the U.S. as companies waste more and more of their time on lawsuits. Congress needs to wake up! The rest of the world, unfettered by this idiocy, is increasingly dominating the outside-U.S. market, which is most of it, because it is not saddled with this nonsense.
For those that are curious, a list of the patents Wi-LAN holds is here:
http://www.wi-lan.com/patents/patents-issued.aspx
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
The basic idea behind a patent is to allow the patent holder "shelter time" to develop, market, sell, and profit from their new inventions.
It is an error to think that the patent owner has to build something. When the patent system was established it was understood that some farmer or garage mechanic may make the big intellectual break through and not have the money to manufacture the gizmo. The "shelter time" was not only to develop, market, sell, and profit. It was also intended to allow investors to seek financing for a new venture or to license the invention to existing manufacturers.
How can a company claim damages if they haven't done the above? Patents are what they are, but it strikes me as just silly - you might be in violation of the patent, but how can you, as the patent holder, claim damages without any proof that loss has occurred?
The fact that an unlicensed party sold a product based upon your patent is inherently a loss. There is a loss in terms of the opportunity to make such a sale yourself, a loss in terms of a licensing fee, a loss in terms of diminished value to those you are currently negotiating licenses with, etc.
No, these self-interested behemoths want the patent system changed to an even more corrupt "first to file" system, which would screw the little guy and eliminate the last defense of OSS and small-time developers known as "prior art".
Under such a system any large software house would be able to simply gather up the related breakthroughs small time and freeware developers created, patent them, then sue them out of existence.
No, what is needed is a more conservative reformation which does not involve input from self-interested parties.
Specifically, it should involve closer scrutiny by patent examiners, raising the bar on what is considered patentable, and removing the conflict of interest currently in place by making the filer responsible for searching for prior art.
Prior art should be at worst investigated through careful research by the examiners themselves, and would best be done by submitting the patents to private scrutiny by experts in the field (the impartial halls of academia) under strict NDA's
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I'm surprised that the RIAA hasn't yet found a way to sue all their file sharers in that backwater dump!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Canada paid for the patents. Blame them. it's time the US has a "War On Canada"! Why not? The US dollar is shrinking fast, and the Canadian dollar is looking better and better. We need to tap into that. I say they're hiding Weapons Of Mass Litigation, or WMLs! Canada give up your WML, or we of the US will get on the web, try and figure out where in the world you are and who your leads are, followed by a "Mission Accomplished" photo op, then a little "Shock and Awe" and to save time we'll install shredders at the US Treasury too. You don't want to mess with the US, we're armed with pure unfiltered stupidity, and you can't argue with that! :)
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
The license holders have nothing to add to the marketplace and so their not interested in cross licenses. They just want the money now, which stifles invention and progress.
There is nothing inherently wrong with license holders. They provide one valid method for an investor to cash out on the invention. The fact that the system is currently abused does not mean we should throw it out. Should we get rid of email because there is spam? A firm that specializes in license holding for a particular technology or industry can be a useful "marketplace" for companies seeking to license innovations. Here is one example of a good license holder, the University of California. The University holds numerous patents with no intention to do anything more than license the invention. The licensing fees vary depending on the organization, small local firms are treated more favorably than international conglomerates, firms that employ or support faculty or students are treated more favorably, venture capitalists find the University's published list of available licenses a good source of ideas for new firms. University representatives that I have spoken with have mentioned that they know numerous serial entrepreneurs who come to them to find an interesting patent, develop a company, sell it, and return to repeat the cycle. Also, IIRC, the University gets 50% of the licensing fees, the faculty/student inventor gets around 30%, and his/her department gets the remainder.
Well, these cases are in the Federal court system (http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech-Software/wtr_16280,300,p1.html?PM=GO&a=f), so you could argue that they are centralized, in that the Feds overlay the states.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Patents.... Legalized Extortion for the 21's century. How much more of this do we haveto have before everyone in big business realizes that it's all a bad idea?
Patents are probably more important to small business than to big business. Without patents an inventor or small company has no protection from imitators. Without patents a small company can come up with the next great thing and a multinational conglomerate can merely copy it, manufacture at a cheaper price due to economies of scale, reach a larger audience due to vast sums of money available for advertising, etc. Without some sort of exclusivity to allow an inventor to market an invention himself, or to license the invention to others, there would be little reward for invention. Without the financial reward few would be inventors would bother. Look at countries with little effective intellectual property protection. They are frequently characterized by few inventions and businesses compete based upon being the lowest cost provider, in other words sweatshops.
It really changes depending on the pull of the particular universities. The bigs (McGill, UofT) keep 100% of the patent for themselves, medium sized ones (Calgary should be amongst them) keep 20-50% depending on the IP agreement with the particular researcher and small universities usually get nothing (but they don't have much of a research program). The reason someone like Calgary would allow the researcher to keep the portion of his IP is to make itself more attractive, because otherwise it's hard to compete with other universities for what is a very limited talent pool.
Of course, like everything else, greed has completely corrupted the patent process. Hey, how come we persecute shoplifters but not those who practice market corruption? Oh right, the corrupt judicial system ... sorry, what the fark was I thinking??
Wi-LAN claims in their press release that While we prefer to resolve patent infringement through business discussions, we have consistently maintained that litigation was always a possibility when negotiations do not result in a license within a reasonable time. So, at least allegedly, they have been attempting to get this matter resolved through licensing. And since they've been around for 15 years, it seems perhaps not fair to label them as patent trolls.
So I ask you, Slashdotter, imagine this situation. You invent an incremental technological breakthrough, and you patent it. Let's say it involves some esoteric use of carbon nanotubes. Unfortunately, at the moment nobody is manufacturing nanotubes in the quality or consistency that you would need. Basically you have to wait for other tech to mature before your invention can take off.
A few years pass and finally, nanotech is up to the level where your invention could be profitable. You start to ask around to see if other companies are interested in licensing your patent. No takers. Another year passes, and to your shock, products from major companies start to appear on the market that utilize your exact invention. Again you try to work out a license and they all laugh in your face. "Go ahead, try to take us to court. We'll bury you," some legal intern snickers after one heated telephone exchange. Finally, one "patent holding" company offers to buy your invention. Not for much, but for much more than you would otherwise get for it, namely, zero.
Now who's the bad guy in the above scenario? The poor inventor, who couldn't afford to invent all of the other enabling technologies to produce his patent on his own? The patent holding company, who is building up a portfolio from other frustrated inventors? Or the big corporations, who think they're immune from having to pay for intellectual property they expropriate? Or maybe you really think all patents are bad, and if you invent something, your only option is to either give it away for nothing or to try to keep it a trade secret?
My point is: don't be so quick to slavishly kiss up to the corporate overlords and put down every instance of patent litigation. The big corps must be loving the fact that the supposedly free-thinking tech-savvy intellectuals of the world are all lined up in their corner.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
That is the problem here, that it is questionable if these inventions were not independently developed. If you and someone else at exactly the same time came up with the same idea, the law grants the patent to the first to file. Now, the other person who came up with the idea would need to show that he/she also came up with the idea and that the idea was not developed on it's own.
This is the basis behind some of the so-called protections in patent law, including prior art, and the idea that if something is an obvious use of existing inventions, then it should not be patentable. The problem is that the patent office has clueless idiots working there that can NOT understand what is obvious and what is not. The use of a stapler as a paper-weight for example is an obvious use, yet it might be the sort of thing the patent and trademark office would grant a patent for. So, lawsuit after lawsuit, until someone has the nerve to go to court over the issue.
New Category: Patent Trolling
This way I can disable it from ever appearing on my front page.
What's the point of all these articles? How many times can we discuss the annoyance of frivolous lawsuits or spend time looking for prior art? It's the same discussion over and over and over and over.
Wi-LAN sucks. Patent trolls should burn in a fiery pit of evil monkeys. US courts encourage this stuff. Kill all the lawyers.
There, you can stop reading this thread now.
why? forty-two.
This would stifle the sale of new products.
Further more, if a company came under scrutiny, retailers everywhere would immediately stop buying and selling the disputed equipment. Even without a court injunction, that product would cease to make money.
This could be another case where the mere threat of an accusation could spell doom to a business.
(ps, I don't think stores have any expectation to be in the middle of an ip disagreement. I only argue that it would be unjust if they were.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Some day soon, corporations will realize that they have to unite and collaborate better. I am glad that this is happening, Maybe this will be a unifying force that will promote cooperations like Open Invention Network and fight enemies like Microsoft, NTP and this little bugger.
There should be patent free open standards like IP that everyone can use and build on. What if google had to pay a fraction of a cent for every IP packet as royalty. Would it have taken off in it's infancy. Hell, would internet taken off ?
I found another link that gives the information. The patents claimed in the suit are 5,282,222, RE37,802 () and 5,956,323. The filing dates are 1992, 1997 and 2000. You can Google the numbers to try to understand what the patents are about, but unless you have a deep understanding of RF technology, its will probably be greek.
Brian
I know in the case of Verizon the alleged patent holders literally took their ideas from RFC's and the like to create their patents. There is most definitely existence of prior art out there yet these cretins can attack the likes of VoIP companies, hard drive manufacturers and now wlan hardware vendors.
If it's ever been obvious that we need patent reform before, it should be painfully obvious now.
This is exactly the problem with patents:
I am an inventor, it is too expensive for me to patent my ideas, thus the only patents that I have, have been created during employment. Most all of the people doing the "inventing" on their own find it difficult or impossible to patent.
large corporations and well funded universities spend millions of dollars a year patenting trivial or even not-so-trivial techniques. ("Not so trivial" is still not "non-obvious")
Patents only protect big business from small business, and make competition difficult.
That is the problem here, that it is questionable if these inventions were not independently developed. If you and someone else at exactly the same time came up with the same idea, the law grants the patent to the first to file.
In general that is a good thing. It encourage inventors to file and increase the body of public knowledge, filing sooner means patents also expire sooner. I think this far outweighs the rare occasion where you have simultaneous independent inventions.
Except the real value isn't having an idea. You want an idea? I got hundreds. No, the profit to society comes from *executing* the idea, making a product, and actually enriching people's lives.
So I say no patents. Let this be a rush to the market. AND a rush to make copycats, because, hey, if I can do the same thing for less then why *shouldn't* society reward me.
Anyway, just my VHO.
These guys hold a ton of WiMax patents. The summary said wifi, which may or may not include WiMax. I'm more interested in WiMax. If I knew for certain that they would never get any money, I'd be willing to wait until the patents expire.
Well at least they went after the small guys in Apple, Atheros, Belkin, Best Buy, Buffalo, Dell, HP, Intel, and Lenovo. I mean, it be an incredibly stupid strategy to pull a SCO and go after some of the the biggest computer related companies in the world like IBM, Novell, and RedHat. I hope the companies can find enough operating capital to make it through the lawsuit.
I must assume that building houses a court very friendly to the patent trolls, probably someone ignorant of technology enough to not recognize obviousness and prior art in the tech sector.
The primary reason is that a few years ago the ED Texas set itself up specifically to be a venue for these kinds of cases. In 2002 there were 32 patent cases in ED Texas. In 2006 there were over 10x that number. They've developed a set of local rules that favor rapid resolution of cases. If you're a smaller patent troll going up against a larger patent holder, you want a speedy resolution. Otherwise, the big patent holder can bleed you dry with motion after motion, and extended discovery. The judges in ED Texas aren't idiots, and from what I've heard, the jurors aren't either.
Still, the combination of local rules and a pro-plaintiff bias add up to a very favorable venue for trolls.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I wonder if Cisco knew they were caving in to extortion. From the description I knew of products being developed and sold in the early 90's using the claimed patents.
The US needs a law that states if prior art, or useless patent trolling is the result, then the trolls pay all the bills and must post bond for any damages caused. Maybe even punative damages too.
Put an end to have patent will troll.
Even if they make no profits from their own patent trolling activities, big business likes this patent system because it keeps small innovative businesses from becoming competitors. Big business wins, people lose. The patent system needs to be changed radically so that the only patents issued are for things that are so innovative that without a patent system they would not happen anytime soon, or at least when needed. Things like new drugs that need massive amounts of research should still be patented in most cases. But most of technology consists of trivial patents that have no value in terms of being a contribution to society.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Where those who know can post the details of an alleged patent infringement case, where the rest of us can basically provide prior art ammunition for the defendants in any litigation... Let's see whose patent portfolio wins in that circumstance, because I highly doubt the trolls will come out on top.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
As I understand it, the difference between first to invent and first to file occurs when two different inventors have applied for a patent. If more than one inventor or group of inventors have applied for a patent on the same subject matter under a first to invent system, an interference proceeding happens. In the case where a first inventor publishes the invention and a second inventor applies for a patent, a change of priority system from first to invent to first to file would have no effect: the first inventor's publication could still count against the second inventor's patent application.
Perscepctive? How about not blaming Bush for maintaining existing policy?
CIA (with British MI) over-throw of the democratically elected Government of Iran in 1956, to install a controllable monarch and stop the planned nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (BP). Eventual Islamic Revolution as direct consequence.
Invasion of Granada, a member of the (British) Commonwealth because it was going "communist".
Aid in the repalcement of the government of Indonesia with a military dictatorship because the democratic one was "communist" and Nike et al would need somewhere for their sweatshops.
Israel...
Vietnam...
Nicaragua...
Colomobia...
Saudi Arabia...
Pakistan...
What are you going to call people with resources that you want to steal after "terrorist" is as obsolete as "communist"?
Please mod parent up;, informative.
Bring back Sirius Punk!
Except the real value isn't having an idea. You want an idea? I got hundreds. No, the profit to society comes from *executing* the idea, making a product, and actually enriching people's lives.
Inventing something is execution. Manufacturing a product is merely duplication of the original invention.
So I say no patents. Let this be a rush to the market. AND a rush to make copycats, because, hey, if I can do the same thing for less then why *shouldn't* society reward me.
Because society benefits far more from inventors than from copiers. Without some sort of exclusivity to allow an inventor to market an invention himself, or to license the invention to others, there would be little reward for invention. Without the financial reward few would be inventors would bother. Look at countries with little effective intellectual property protection. They are frequently characterized by few inventions and businesses compete based upon being the lowest cost provider, in other words sweatshops.
Wait, I am unclear as to why society would want to let an inventor "cash out" of their invention.
That provides the incentive to do the research and experimentation necessary to create the invention. Who manufacturers and markets the widgets is unimportant, there is no compelling reason for the inventor to do so.
As someone who expects to hold patents within my life I find the idea that someone could buy my patent then sit on the technology to be totally against the point.
Then don't sell the patent, license the technology. Licensing is a form of cashing out. The license can include clauses that prevent sitting on the technology. The University of California patent licensing program includes such provisions to avoid the type of abuse you describe.
A couple more of these should *really* light a fire under patent reform legislation...
What about real intellectual rights ? What if I create a very interesting protocol or routing algorithm for mesh networks, should I not get paid for it ? Should it not be protected ?
It would be a shame if the plaintiff's lawyers died mysteriously...
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
The scum driving all tihs crap is a cabal of Lawyers trying to run every dam thing on the planet. Lawyers we need damn few of them and they should be treated like the bottom feeders they are.
Actually I think they stole it form the HAM operators that were using this technology in their garages long before WiFi became the standard
If this is true and any of the HAMs have records then it could be prior art.
...the contraction of which is "USers". ;-)