WLAN Win For CSIRO

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 15 November 2006

The Australian Government research organisation, CSIRO, has had a strategic win in a court case to win recognition of its ten year old patent for wireless networking. The win came in the form of a summary judgment in its test case against WLAN equipment maker Buffalo Technology in the US Federal Court of the Eastern District of Texas. The Judge granted a summary judgment in favour of CSIRO in regard to the wireless LAN patent's validity and further more that Buffalo Technology, had infringed that patent. However, the organisation acknowledges this win is just a step along the way as it now faces cases bought against it by industry giants such as Intel, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Apple and NETGEAR. CSIRO Chief Executive Geoff Garrett said "this is an important win because the Judge has supported CSIRO's position comprehensively. We are obviously very pleased. However, it is only a brick in the wall - CSIRO still has a long way to go." "This is an important win because the Judge has supported CSIRO's position comprehensively," Garrett said. The court will determine a reasonable royalty rate for future use of the technology by Buffalo. The CSIRO was granted a US patent for this technology in 1996, facing the extensive use of the wireless networking technology CSIRO claims is covered by the patent, it filed a test case for patent infringement against Buffalo Technology and its Japanese parent in February 2005. In two separate cases, a number of US-based industry players, who feared they could be forced to pay royalties to the Australian WLAN inventor, filed suit against CSIRO a year after the Buffalo case was first filed. These cases seek to have the patent invalidated by the US courts and will likely take some time yet to reach a conclusion as the CSIRO has now filed patent infringement counter claims against them. CSIRO says its patents make it possible to increase the speed of WLAN by a factor of five and says it offered licenses on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms to major suppliers as soon as they started selling devices which used the CSIRO technology. Related news items With Half A Billion Cell Phones China Readies High Speed -24/08/2007 Nokia Adds PlayReady -06/08/2007 D-Link Boosts Draft N Range -30/07/2007 iPhone Gets Enterprise Credibility -16/07/2007 LG Goes After Quanta Again -05/07/2007 Newer news items Agere Sells Wireless Patents -02/03/2007 Atheros Reaches 100 Million Chip Landmark -27/02/2007 Linksys Releases Draft-N For SMBs -30/01/2007 Symbol Builds A Bridge Between RFID and WLAN -07/12/2006 Qualcomm Acquires Airgo -04/12/2006 Older news items Lenovo To Put Draft-802.11n In Notebooks -08/11/2006 NETGEAR First With Draft-n In ADSL2+ Modem -11/09/2006 Pre-N WLAN Sales Grind To A Halt -06/09/2006 aql Offers Brits Free WoVLAN From Mobiles -05/09/2006 New Atheros Silicon To Lower Pre-N Cost -30/08/2006 Tag This Now: