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CSIRO Settles With Tech Giants Over WiFi Patent Spat
Combat Wombat brings news that the legal battle between the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation (CSIRO) and a host of major tech corporations has come to end, with a large settlement going to the CSIRO. The fight was over a patent on wireless LAN technology, which already earned the CSIRO a victory in court over Buffalo Technology and a settlement with Hewlett-Packard. The remaining 13 companies, which include Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Nintendo, have now chosen to settle as well. "[The CSIRO] will use the money won from a Wi-Fi technology patent battle to fund further research. ... It is unclear how much money has flowed to the CSIRO, but experts say the technology would be worth billions of dollars if royalties were paid on an ongoing basis."
I wonder, if patent-holders are justified in doing anything with their holdings, except donating them to public domain — in your opinion...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
CISRO got a good deal with the settlement.
If it went to court, it probably would have been easy to fight. Since CISRO is south of the equator, the WiFi technology they developed is out of phase with what we use up here, so clearly different.
That's why Australian toilet manufacturers can't break into other big markets. The water spins the wrong way.
Dual Opteron < $600
Let's say I'm doing some cool scientific work in wireless communication stuff and I invent a cool method for communication over soda which is sure thousands of times more efficient than ethernet over fiber. Now, do I have to build a factory to make and commercialize my new cool NICs ? Or can I patent my idea, and get a share from whoever makes money out of it ? I think you get the point in this case.
Then do something with the research! Any organization that has the power to do research for the sake of research, should be scientific and not have the power to patent to begin with.
Why? Why should the Australian public fund research that companies such as Dell, Microsoft, Apple, etc can then just take for free and make billions off of?
If they'd followed due dilligence and gone to the CSIRO and licenced the technology, we wouldn't be having a discussion about whether the CSIRO deserved patent royalties for this technology that they "never implemented". You feel that the CSIRO is not obliged to royalties for this discovery because of the mistaken perception that they've just dreamed up this patent dispute as a way of extracting cash from companies which happen to accidentally cross onto their IP turf. That's usually the case with patent trolls, but this isn't a patent troll. They invented it, at their expense, and they were ripped off.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Or maybe companies should stop trying to think they can steal someone else's research and profit from it.
That statement implies the concepts you contrast are incompatiable, they are not. An organization that exisits only to maximize its own profit would willingly sacrifice people's freedoms and liberty, if that seemed to be the most convenient way to pursue this goal. Once upon a time, it was required to demonstrate how a corporation would provide a net benefit to society before a corporate charter could be issued (it would, in theory, be revoked if that benefit never materialized). However, that was a long time ago and the standards are far lower and few seem to remember that corporations were originally allowed to exisit by society, rather than having some intrinsic right to exisit. Therefore IMHO, anyone who values freedom and liberty should at least be suspicious of corporations in their modern form.
What part of this was secret?
CSIRO was after the companies from the word go, they knowingly and deliberately infringed on a development made by CSIRO and CSIRO made not secret of the fact that they held the patent and wanted to be compensated for their development work if it was to be used in a commercial application.
CSIRO tried to deal with the companies, when the chipset manufacturers told CSIRO to sod off. Several companies including Apple, Microsoft (add Sony and we have the holy trinity of evil) and Dell are suing CSIRO in order to renege on paying CSIRO for their patent. The only news here is that CSIRO's patent has been upheld, which is nice because it means the patent system is being used for good (as in the way it was meant to work). What part of this was hidden exactly.
CSIRO is a Commonwealth government (Australia) science and technology development organisation, which means that my taxes paid for this (I'm Australian and have no problem with taxes being used for increasing Australia's knowledge and abilities) but they also hold patents and collect license fee's which go towards reducing the amount of tax dollars CSIRO requires to keep research going.
All rants aside, I agree with you, suing another company by using a secret patent should result in the companies directors being drawn and quartered and the lawyers involved being put against a wall outside the courthouse and shot immediately. But more realistically should cause the immediate and irreversible revocation of the patent in question placing the technology into the public domain.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.