Wi-Fi patent legal battle between CSIRO and wireless big names

Posted November 22, 2006 at 08:48 PM by XXCJCM

Section: Communications, Broadband Cards

What do you do if you don’t want to pay the royalty for using someone else’s patented technology? File a court action to deny inventor’s claim over the patent.

Yes…that is what has happened to a Wi-Fi technology patented by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), an Australian government-owned research organization.

A court in Texas ruled yesterday that Australia’s national science agency has a patent on some of the core technologies used in some versions of Wi-Fi. This means a hundred or so companies that make products that include this wireless networking technology now face the possibility of patent infringement lawsuits.

But before a lawsuit is served against them, a group of wireless-related technology big names, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Intel, Apple and Netgear, is filing their own court action to nullify the patent owned by CSIRO.

Would this hold water? Only time will tell as this kind of lawsuit normally takes years to be settled. However, there are no details on the basis of the claim filed by the wireless companies. Stay tuned for more news.

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