Who Invented the Linux-Based Wireless Router?

mtaht writes "I've just had the interesting experience of being deposed to talk about one of the first embedded, Linux-based, wireless routers. Our (free!) 1998 publication of how to make one predates patent #7035281, filed September 13, 2000, by someone else. Their patent was recently granted and is now being disputed in court, in part using our how-to as an example of prior art. The lawsuit continues; the case goes before a judge shortly, and a jury trial if necessary is scheduled for the spring. I find myself plagued with the question: So... who invented the embedded Linux based wireless router? What relevance does 'who' have, when there is such an enormous confluence of ideas from thousands of people? What constitutes invention, anyway?"

Comments

Linux Router Project of Course

[Diesel Dave]

Certainly not the very first ever made, but likely the first mainsteam implementation that was available.

I had a 2U 386SX 16Mhz Workstation with full length ISA 900MHz WaveLAN card, that ran LRP off 3.5" 1.44MB.
Host name was 'Brain-Damage'. Some of the first LRP development was done on that back in 1997.

The boys over in Latvia that went on to form RouterBoard were doing much more then me with wireless but I'm not sure if it was with Linux at the time.

Dave

Re:The Mother of all Patents ...

[stokessd]

> World domination follows . . .

Except on the desktop... :D

ok, I'll spell it out

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Yep. He's looking for prior art that pre-dates him, and he's asking how to prove and attribute prior art to someone.

For this, there are some real common mistakes to avoid:
* You have to find prior art for the claims, not the summary
* You have to find prior art for *all* the claims
* Good news is that acceptable forms of prior art include ads, manuals, magazine articles...

It's not rocket science, but a lot of news stories like this end up wasting people's energy because people contribute their knowledge without knowing these simple rules, and it's all or mostly useless.

As someone who's spent time scraping slashdot stories with 200+ comments for possible *useful* prior art, I can tell you that a lot of people don't know these basic rules.