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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.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
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
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
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?"
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