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."
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.
Exactly. So the answer is no, they're not patent trolls at all. Others have said that they could've got it to work and that the solution they found wasn't revolutionary, but no one else did get it to work, so CSIRO gets the credit and should enjoy some benefits from that. If you're saying that they did nothing unique, then why didn't you do it first, get a working solution out there and enjoy the results?
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.
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?