Slashdot Mirror
CSIRO Sues US Carriers Over Wi-Fi Patent
An anonymous reader notes that CSIRO has sued Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile in — wait for it — East Texas District Court. "Australia's peak science body stands to reap more than $1 billion from its lucrative Wi-Fi patent after already netting about $250 million from the world's biggest technology companies, an intellectual property lawyer says. The CSIRO has spent years battling 14 technology giants including Dell, HP, Microsoft, Intel, Nintendo, and Toshiba for royalties and made a major breakthrough in April last year when the companies opted to avoid a jury hearing and settle for an estimated $250 million. Now, the organization is bringing the fight to the top three US mobile carriers in a new suit targeting Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile. It argues they have been selling devices that infringe its patents."
As I understand it, chipset makers license the technology. Those chipsets are then incorporated into whatever product is being made, be that phones, pda's, laptops, etc etc.
So in effect, the CSIRO wants to be be paid by the chipset makers, and then by the companies that use those chipsets, seems greedy.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Normally I'm cynical about government, but the CSIRO do good work.
They're a bunch of scientists who get left alone by the government because the Australian Government doesn't understand them well enough to interfere with them. Previously underfunded, this 'lazy billion' might actually cause the government to sit up and try and to pay attention.
For once the patent system is actually working as intended.
I for one applaud the CSIRO, and I look forward to seeing the freeloading corporations that have made billions on the back of the CSIRO's research get fucked in the ass.
Being smart is taking your innovation and actually doing something with it, in this case, manufacturing. This is called "value added" in economics. Ya, they might get a quarter to a full billion from a settlement, but the people who *use* that tech and build with it make umpteen billions, over and over again.
That's smart(er).
Mideast oil producing nations sell their raw resources..then did nothing with it beyond splurging and blowing it mostly. They failed to develop any heavy industry of note, or any sort of trans-oil-selling sustainable economy despite generations of serious cashflow in...they failed the next step and didn't use that surplus windfall in any "value added" manner.
I can sell my spiffy new invented hammer and saw design one time, or I can use this innovation in the market place directly and build a lot of furniture and houses with my new hammer and saw, beating my competition handily, and make a lot more. This gives me ten times the potential budget to play with for more R&D and then manufacturing gains.
CSIRO does some good research, but in the end after all is said and done, once you follow the economic breadcrumbs around, manufacturing is the big kahuna on making loot, and China still gets it for free or chump change and makes the real serious moolah from that same research (same as they are doing with every other nation's R&D now). Selling raw R&D-failing to use it yourself- is no different at all from selling any other "raw" natural resource, like mideast oil. Ya, you can make some money, sometimes big money, but never the ultimate serious money.
Ideas are cheap on the global scale, implementation of those ideas makes the hugemongous national trade surpluses. CSIRO does implement their ag research domestically, but the other..not sure what they do with it other than try to sell it cheap, and even then they are forced to sue to get a little. And frankly, a billion dollars for wifi? That's chump change on the international scene. Better than nothing, but still just selling off raw resources (oz brains in this case) cheap.
I wouldn't feel bad about it, and don't take it as a dig against Australia (sort of a joke there..) because most nations are doing that now, they have more or less conceded world economic dominance to China for short term profits and some cheap consumer trinkets, a couple generations worth, then..that stuff won't be all that cheap anymore. China will reach a point they can demand more, they won't have to sell cheap, once they have more or less completely squashed manufacturing elsewhere, and also built up their own R&D establishment.
The CSIRO is playing the same rules that apply to everyone. The reason why the big company's aren't happy is that the CSIRO has no need to do a patent "swap". Normally, the big companies would just threaten to sue each other due to patent infringement and then at the last minute agree to cross licensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-licensing with a minimal (if any) amount of money trading hands. However, the CSIRO doesn't make end product. As such they have no need for cross licensing. They just want royalties for their IP. Big business goes after the smaller guys that don't have IP to cross license all the time, why is it that now the shoe is on the other foot that everyone is up in arms about it?