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Australian WiFi Inventors Win US Legal Battle

Posted by samzenpus on from the piece-of-the-pie dept.

First time accepted submitter Kangburra writes "Australian government science body CSIRO said Sunday it had won a multi-million-dollar legal settlement in the United States to license its patented technology that underpins the WiFi platform worldwide. Scientists from the agency invented the wireless local area network (WLAN) technology that is the basis of the WiFi signal employed by computers, smartphones and other Internet-ready devices around the world."

7 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Break Out The Australian Sparkling White Wine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a major cause for celebration.
     
    Remember folks, this is a RESEARCH ORGANIZATION, these funds will be mostly plowed back into further research.
     
    Also it makes for a good case-in-point, it doesn't matter WHO did the work or WHERE their funding comes from, a valid patent is a valid patent.

    1. Re:Break Out The Australian Sparkling White Wine by viperidaenz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Remember folks, this is PATENT LAWSUIT, these funds will be mostly plowed back into the legal firms that filed the suit.

    2. Re:Break Out The Australian Sparkling White Wine by cheater512 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah well thats the fault of the bloody US companies, not the CSIRO.
      Some money is better than none for a research organisation.

  2. Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The CSIRO isn't your typical patent troll. They do serious R&D on all sorts of things: environment, solar, agriculture, minerals, you name it. They're very well respected in Australia for the research they do.

    The money from this win will go towards funding more research. These are the good guys; if they have a patent for something, it will be more than your typical "XOR for a visible cursor that doesn't interfere with the display" job.

  3. Re:Somebody shake that mans hand by RobHart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you look at the list of companies that were sued (and have settled), you will notice that none of them is an Australian company. It was Australian tax payer dollars that funded this research (and the patenting process), so just how does the Australian government tax all those non-Australain companies??? The ONLY way to do it is with patents so that the companies making money from the technology in many countries around the world pay a part of their profits back to the inventors.

    As has been said, the CSIRO will use this money to fund further research - such as the "pure" radio astronomy work which resulted in this spin off piece of technology in the first place!

    RobHart

  4. Re:Somebody shake that mans hand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So us Australians should put all our [taxpayers] research that we funded into the public domain for other countries to use for free?
    How about copyrights? if the US designs the next advanced fighter, should get the designs, blueprints and source code go into the public domain?

  5. Way to promote cultural stereotypes by qirtaiba · · Score: 4, Insightful

    25 years later, your first thought about Australia is still Crocodile Dundee? Kinda offensive. Next time there's a story on an American patent owner, should my first post say "What's next? Uncle Sam going to whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy while eating a Big Mac?"