Is Australia's CSIRO a Patent Troll?

Posted by timothy on Friday June 1, 2012 @07:50PM from the always-thought-of-it-a-fairly-benevolent dept.

schliz writes "Australian tech publication iTnews is defining 'patent trolls' as those who claim rights to an invention without commercializing it, and notes that government research organization CSIRO could come under that definition. The CSIRO in April reached a $220 million settlement over three U.S. telcos' usage of WLAN that it invented in the early 1990s. Critics have argued that the CSIRO had failed to contribute to the world's first wifi 802.11 standard, failed to commercialize the wifi chip through its spin-off, Radiata, and chose to wage its campaign in the Eastern District courts of Texas, a location favored by more notorious patent trolls."

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Re:umm by crutchy · 2012-06-01 20:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

maybe cos its a government research organisation, not a commercial company. maybe the difference is that many other government research orgs are quite happy to sink countless millions in taxpayer-funded grants into new tech that is merely ripped off by commercial companies, so that taxpayers get to pay for it twice-over.

what csiro does with patents in the commercial world is called "business".

i say good on csiro for working for their major shareholder - the aussie taxpayer.