Slashdot Mirror
Is Australia's CSIRO a Patent Troll?
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."
Where does having actuallly done the damn work and in fact continuing to put their efforts into doing even more research fit into the patent troll definition?
CSIRO actually does research. Patent trolls buy their patents.
No they are not patent trolls. They innovate as their primary purpose, and do not acquire patents from other organisations so they can collect royalties or litigate.
Based on this any research University or Organisation around the world would become a patent troll unless they start to use the 'research' aka patents they created. Let me spell it out for you, CSIRO stands for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation..... Its a Research Organisation that is funded partly by the Australian Govement and partly by the income it gains from patents it created based on its research. This what a Research Organisation do.... it works on new ideas, gets them to a usable stage and sells them on to other companies to use the idea/tech to make money. In return they get a cut of this all done via the patent system. Would slashdot dare call Stanford University or Harvard University a patent troll? Hell no... Poor IT world. CSIRO asked for payment based on companies using there research when all the IT companies tried to steal the idea and play the mob card, ie if no one pays we don't have to! CSIRO is very easy going and licences the work they do at very cheap prices, its not like they asked a over the top amount. Any money they do gain is feed back into future research projects and isn't paid out to shareholders or fat CEO's!
If the article heading is a question, then the answer is automatically...
NO.
Submit articles with real reporting please, the type that presents facts, instead of asking questions.
CSIRO have had this in the courts for years. All of these companies ignored the lawsuit and their own peril.
If you want to call a patent troll someone who says "This is a new invention. I'm taking you to court for taking my patent and using it without paying me, even though i've told you that you must pay for it", then yeah, they're a patent troll.
How about you suck my ball sack for repeating an argument you've already been slapped for.
CSIRO is anything but a patent troll. Period.
AC
Yeah, deffo taking the piss here.
CSIRO is not a patent troll because they freely license their patents to almost anyone who wants to use them. They don't lock their patents up and wait for someone to accidentally infringe them, if you want to license a CSIRO patent you just contact them. Patent trolls do not license their patents. CSIRO developed the technologies they license, the money gained from the patents goes into more research, so they aren't trolling to get money for shareholders because they haven't got any.
So the article doesn't know its arse from its elbow.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
If CSIRO is a patent troll then so is every major university. Stanford University's Office of Technology Licensing, for example, exists to generate income through the licencing of Stanford developed technologies which they then invest back into research and education. CSIRO similarly invests its income back into research and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. The idea that research organisations are patent trolls and shouldn't be allowed to licence their inventions to others in order to maintain their focus on research is both farcical and intellectually bankrupt. Joe Mullin's jingoistic and, frankly, pathetically insular article isn't worth a second reading.
Not to forget CSIRO does a whole bunch of research that they give away absolutely free. It was only the right wing ass hats Liberal Party that demanded all CSIRO research must generate a 'Profit' ie research for pesticides is OK but research using natural predators to controls pest is bad (don't get to sell pesticides etc.). Fortunately this idea was tossed out as basically evil and CSIRO still do a lot of free to access research http://www.csiro.au/. The whining about this patent is likely because money going to CSIRO is a double loss for the greedy, having to pay and a lot of that payment going to free to access research.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
1 "bag of arse" = How many "Library of Congresses" . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I find this article annoying as the poster is using this article to promote his point of view which is biased and misleading.
The CSIRO is a scientific research organization and as such it can in no way commercialize the technology.
I agree that it was sad that CSIRO have to take companies to court to defend their patents but if these these companies would play by the rules and license the technology then CSIRO would not have to resort to the flawed legal system.
The fact that you do not like the way it uses patents to fund research is neither here nor their it as it is using patent law for it's intended purpose which is different from a person or organization that uses patents purely for litigation.
I would ask the poster that if he is going to submit propaganda that at least he should be truthful and honest about what he is doing.
propaganda [prop-uh-gan-duh] Show IPA noun 1.information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc. ....
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/propaganda
When a research organization files a patent on non-trivial research they did, it's called "innovation", and when an organization which employes mostly lawyers files one on a fairly obvious thing it's called "trolling".
Copyright and patent are very different. Patents give you exclusive rights to an idea, process, or method. Copyrights only cover making copies of a specific implementation. Comparisons between the two will always result in a flawed analogy.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
No, it's to retroactively sue for infringing that patent. A common trick is to wait until your patent has ALMOST become a defacto standard then sue (see Microsoft's FAT lawsuits and some of the LCD companies out there)
Burma?
Prior to the CSIRO lawsuit, CSIRO actively attempted to license its wifi patents. See http://www.ipo.org/AM/TemplateRedirect.cfm?Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=4600
When the big multinationals refused to pay patent fees, CSIRO opted to defend its intellectual property rights. That's what the patent system is for. If defending intellectual property rights is considered trolling, then why have IP rights?
...but I couldn't see where I could mod the submission as "troll"?