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The Story Behind Australia's CSIRO Wi-Fi Claims
An anonymous reader writes "U.S. consumers will be making a multimillion dollar donation to an Australian government agency in the near future, whether they like it or not. After the resolution of a recent lawsuit, practically every wireless-enabled device sold in the U.S. will now involve a payment to an Australian research organization called the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO, which hired U.S. patent lawyers who told a very lucrative tale in an East Texas courtroom, that they had '[invented] the concept of wireless LAN ... [and] when the IEEE adopted the 802.11a standard in 1999 — and the more widely-used 802.11g standard years later — the group was choosing CSIRO technology. Now CSIRO had come to court to get the payments it deserved.'"
U.S. government - and therefore U.S. people and consumers who voted and allow the government to continue - have been bullying other countries with their insane views on patents and copyrights for almost a century. Oh what you say now, don't like it when other countries do the exact thing you have been doing for a long time. Cry me a river.
Unlike patent trolls, CSIRO actually creates technology through research.
They deserve payment, unlike most who file their claims through East Texas.
American customers aren't the only ones who'll be paying. Just the only ones who refused to without a lawsuit over the issue.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Controversy and flamebait generate page-views as outraged nationalists and functionally incompetent OS bigots click and re-click to see how people react to their irrelevant options. This is extremely predictable, and generates ad income. Slashdot editors know this.
John Dvorak and other fucktard "pundits" realized this a long time ago and turned it into a career.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
No they actually put implemented it in silicon (which is WHY they ere granted a patent). Because they are not a commercial company, they didn't mass produce it (which the Ars article seems to take as meaning they didn't implement it).