http://www.crn.com.au/News/158194,csiros-wi-fi-patent-victory-earns-200m-and-counting.aspx
A lot of people dont know that WiFi came out of the CSIRO in Australia.
Great to see the royalties rolling in. Will be interesting to see what other technologies this money gets to fund.
Cheers,
Dean
Dean - not sure that means that WiFi is from CSIRO. It's just that some part of WiFi involves a process for which CSIRO has a patent. The 802.11 suite are standards. That these incorporate some process that is patented is, arguably, unfortunate as it reduces the spread of this technology - i.e. we won't have open WiFi (until someone works around the patent).
ReplyDeleteHi Nic, If you do some research you'll probably find the CSIRO had a much bigger part in inventing wifi 15 years ago than you realise.
ReplyDeleteIt's my understanding they actually had a complete system working before it became 'a standard'.
Years later on they were also the first people to commercially develop multipath in 'N' series wifi.
yes wifi has been made a 'standard' but the CSIRO were claiming patent rights as part of the standards process, it was only when 14 companies chose to delay payments that the CSIRO undertook injunction court action (Buffalo had to take equipment off shelves for a few months).
At the end of the day this research was funded and paid for by the Australian citizens so no reason why Dell etc should profit on the back of research paid for by australian tax payers without payment for royalties.