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Australian WiFi Inventors Win US Legal Battle
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."
What's next? Crocodile Dundee doing a commercial for CSIRO saying "That's not a wireless router. THAT'S a wireless router."
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.
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.
This lawsuit began years ago. They began suing people in 2005.
It's sad to see how much effort they had to go through. This case is EXACTLY what patents are for: a bunch of scientists did some research and patented the results - companies took their results and made commercial products out of that and believed they could get away with not paying any kind of royalty or license fee.
The vast majority of this money will go back into further research, slowly making the world a better place.
For those who care to know (PDF): Their Most Recent Annual Report.
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It's nothing to do with "standards" at all. It's solely about technology which makes wifi work indoors without signal echo. They came up with the solution to the issue, patented it, then everyone else adapted it without licensing the technology. This is actually a perfect usage of patent and exactly what it's for.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Wifi? That's nothing!. For REAL world-changing Aussie IT, look no further than Product Activation! ,
which won a massive $388 million payout (Mostly from from Microsoft). And then lost. And then won again, and then lost again, and then a sorta 25% win or something..
I mean, come on!. Imagine life WITHOUT product activation. Microsoft products just wouldn't "feel" the same. It's the core technology of their whole solution!
They didn't wait for it to be adapted as such. A large majority of manufacturers rightfully accept the patents involved. See this comment I posted above for a more detailed explanation.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
After, I believe, substantial attempts to get people to negotiate licences without involving a court.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
And long before that, they were trying to negotiate patent fees with the various vendors, but were ignored. The lawsuits were the last resort, and have mostly ended in the vendors settling. Revenues have been rolled back into a fund for future research. Read more here.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
PS. CSIRO isn't a "troll". It's the research organization which actually invented this tech, and have been trying to license it for the last decade. They've reached agreements with over 30 major manufacturers for prior licensing. This is about as far from "patent troll" as you can get. Real patent trolls - compaines who acquire patents and sit on them for years waiting for tech to be adopted so they can then sue everyone, deserve your disdain. CSIRO doesn't.
The only reason it's taken so long to get success for its patents is because it's in Australia - many US companies simply ignore patents from international companies because the cost of suing someone in the US is generally too high if you're overseas. US companies willfully ignore thousands of original invention patents originating internationally. Another great example is Franmara's "Champagne Xpress". It's a champagne bottle opener which was invented by a New Zealander, Bryce Stewart. It was patented in the US in 2003. Franmara CEO Frank Chiorazzi asked for a sample of the invention, then offered Bryce $2500 to license it. The offer was flatly refused - nevertheless, Franmara began manufacturing and selling them in the US. They're now popularly used in restaurants nationwide. The original inventor doesn't get see a cent of the procedes from his invention or patent, and it's very difficult for a NZer to procede with a lawsuit against a major US company, despite obvious patent theft.
Realise, patent theft does occur, and trolls are not always the victims. In both cases above, the original inventors are, still holders of their original patents.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
As I understand it the Slashdot article is (predictably) rather misleading. The technology involved isn't wifi per se but a clever signal processing method used in newer wifi standards (IE 802.11 N). IIRC it's the bit which allows signals recieved at multiple antennas to be used in a way that identifies multiple distinct signals coming from different directions at the same time (an increasingly important feature as the the number of devices explodes).
It also demonstrates some of the benefits of a cross-specialisation science organisation like the CSIRO. IIRC the original idea was come up with (and used) by someone at CSIRO working in radio astronomy. More commercial uses were identified and they sought to commercialise it by licencing it to anyone who could make use of it.
This is not the case of a patent troll buying some patent and belatedly wielding it as a weapon in an established market nor a company leveraging a patent to hurt competitors. It's a genuine invention that they tried to licence but ultimately had to go to court over because the Wifi companies (perhaps not used to dealing with entities outside their patent clique) refused to licence.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The real triumph is that a US court actually recognized any patent from outside the US as binding US companies.
Anything else has already been done.
heya,
Well, in a bit of luck for the "little guy", it seems there may be good news for the champagne cork opener guy:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/6667488/Kiwi-inventor-wins-champagne-patent-battle
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10795728
If what's written in those articles is true, it sounds like the American companies were real dicks - asking for a sample to "evaluate", offering him a paltry $2500 for unlimited use, then when they got turned down going to find his Chinese manufacturer, and attempting to steal his product.
Cheers,
Victor
Yeah, he's won the court action in New Zealand - which unfortunately has no effect on sales of the product in the US at all. It's just an example to illustrate the point though. OP was making out that inventors actually standing up for their rights makes them "patent trolls". While patent trolls do exist, that doesn't mean that every time an inventor sues someone, they're "trolling". :)
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Their only income from their inventions comes from suing other people or licensing fees extorted by threatening to sue.
No, they aren't trolls. I'll concur that what you've described is one of the characteristics. Another is that patent trolling companies don't do much, if any, research of their own: they buy patents from other companies, and use them to extort payments.
The CSIRO is a research organisation. They've done some incredibly valuable work in a great many fields; their attitude is one of licensing their R&D to commercial companies for commercialisation, rather than doing it themselves. It's a system that has worked very well for over eighty years. The fact that they don't manufacture things themselves does not, in and of itself, make them a patent troll.
In addition, it is worth noting (from the Annual Report) that only ~2% of CSIRO funding comes from intellectual property licensing. Roughly 60% is from the Federal Government and 34% from public, private and foreign co-investments and joint research projects.
It is satisfying to see this finally come to an end; I was recently trying to find what had come of this court case without much luck. I was still a teenager back in the early 2000s when I heard of the CSIRO starting to seek licensing of their radio patents.
A US court did no such thing. This was a settlement.
After fighting it tooth and nail for many years.
If the patent has so much prior art, and nothing is original, why weren't the combined efforts of intel, microsoft, and a bunch of hardware vendors lawyers able to get the patent rejected?
Either you think the legal teams of all said large companies are incompetent, or the item in question had unique properties.
Considering not only were they first to patent, but also the first to have working silicon... I think I know which I'd go with.
Would be nicer, yes. But until then, at least this time the scientists who did the work will get paid for it.
In this particular case, CSIRO actually did invent a bunch of non-obvious stuff crucial to WiFi. So while their royalties will make the devices slightly more expensive, you're erring by comparing to a hypothetical world in which they didn't have a patent on this stuff. The proper comparison is to a world in which WiFi didn't exist or was delayed by years because nobody was willing to do research they did.
Now CSIRO may be a research organization. But this business model of turning government funding into lawsuits around the world is patent trolling. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's the way it is.
OK, so let's turn the question around. You're in charge of the CSIRO, an Australian government-funded research and development arm. What would you have done differently?
The central problem here is that the term "patent troll" doesn't have a universally agreed-upon definition.
Wikipedia lists these qualities that a patent troll generally has:
Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent;
Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;
Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base;
Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights; or
Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers.
Of these, the CSIRO can be legitimately accused of at most one, and even that one isn't clear.
Doing original research isn't sufficient to escape being considered a patent troll.
Not every non-practicing entity who sues over patent infringement is automatically a patent troll, either.
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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?"
One of the biggest patent trolls in the world is acknowledged to be Intellectual Ventures. And they do original research of their own too.
Agreed.
Doing original research isn't sufficient to escape being considered a patent troll.
Also true.
As far as income, IV gets a lot from the companies that have bought a stake in their operations. They aren't solely funded by patent income either.
Also true.
Now CSIRO may be a research organization. But this business model of turning government funding into lawsuits around the world is patent trolling. Sorry if you don't like it, but that's the way it is.
Here you go astray. You pointed out many similaries between IV and CSIRO, but failed to note the major differences.
This quote from Wikipedia shows the major difference (emphasis added):
I argue that a company is a patent troll if they are suing others using patents for technology they neither invented nor use. Basically patent trolling is the use of patents purchased from third parties for the sole purpose of suing other companies. Either invention or real use of the patent in question is enough to keep you from being categorized as a patent troll.
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One of the biggest patent trolls in the world is acknowledged to be Intellectual Ventures. And they do original research of their own too.
But Intellectual Ventures buy patents too. That is the part that makes people call them a patent troll.
The CSIRO did invent this patent to solve a very real problem, and the technology was then used in the WiFi standards. They didn't just sit back and wait for other people to have the same idea so they could sue them (like patent trolls do). They actively promoted it to various companies/organisations.
As far as I am concerned, this is the patent system working as it was designed. The only problem that I have is with this that I don't think that this government organisation should be run as a business. The CSIRO do some amazing science that will never reap any rewards (eg. astronomy). They do this to make the world a better place. The WiFi patents should have been the same thing - something to make the world a better place.
The only argument against this is that it becomes unfair on the competing commercial companies that may make a other patents to achieve a similar outcome. It is hard to compete when the government funded opposition gives it all away. While I can have some sympathy for this argument, if it comes down to a choice between making the world a better place and allowing big companies to make large profits, then I will take the former option.
Their patent expires soon, it was granted in the US in 1996, it seem to be a hardware patent, they made a chip to do ‘fast Fourier transform’ to solve the problem of wireless signals bouncing off walls. The main inventor worked in radio astronomy, "Inspired to think about ways of cleaning up smeared radio signals to make searching for short pulses like those from exploding black holes easier." http://www.google.com/patents/US5487069 http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/CSIRO-honours-wireless-team.aspx
DARPA is the equivalent to CSIRO in the US. Just think how pissed off everyone would be if this story went the other direction...
Catalyst did a story on this just recently. http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2708730.htm. This would be an interesting watch for anyone that has an interest in wireless technologies. It explains what the patent is, how it was conceived and the effort it took for them to gain credit for their work.
in the US its the iron curtain of media and government brainwashing