Friday, November 17, 2006
WiFi Trouble Up Ahead
Posted by Nurhisham Hussein in "NEWS" @ 08:30 AM
"Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization has won a landmark case against Buffalo Technology, 'under which it could receive royalties from every producer of WLAN products worldwide.' US patent 5487069 -- which 'encompasses elements of the 802.11a/g wireless technology that is now an industry standard' -- was granted to the body back in 1996, and has subsequently been utilized in seemingly every piece of wireless kit ever since."
This is potentially huge - if CSIRO wants to, they can now hold virtually any vendor or manufacturer of wifi equipment for ransom. A bunch of technology companies (a virtual who's who, including Microsoft and Intel) are currently suing to have that patent invalidated, but CSIRO have filed a counter-suit claiming patent infringement. Given the just concluded summary judgement against Buffalo Technology (and from my point of view, that judgement was delivered in record time), who'd lay odds against CSIRO winning out? While this doesn't have quite the immediate ramifications of the RIM-NTP tussle, it does mean that at the very least R&D in wifi is going to slow down or be spent on alternative technologies until these cases are resolved. At worst, we'll have prices of wifi products go up as well when royalties are assessed. I can just imagine the reaction Wall Street is going to get from this. Despite CSIRO being a government agency, it looks like they're going to take this as far as they can - in the rather ominous words of their CEO, "CSIRO still has a long way to go.” You can read up the original article here.
This is potentially huge - if CSIRO wants to, they can now hold virtually any vendor or manufacturer of wifi equipment for ransom. A bunch of technology companies (a virtual who's who, including Microsoft and Intel) are currently suing to have that patent invalidated, but CSIRO have filed a counter-suit claiming patent infringement. Given the just concluded summary judgement against Buffalo Technology (and from my point of view, that judgement was delivered in record time), who'd lay odds against CSIRO winning out? While this doesn't have quite the immediate ramifications of the RIM-NTP tussle, it does mean that at the very least R&D in wifi is going to slow down or be spent on alternative technologies until these cases are resolved. At worst, we'll have prices of wifi products go up as well when royalties are assessed. I can just imagine the reaction Wall Street is going to get from this. Despite CSIRO being a government agency, it looks like they're going to take this as far as they can - in the rather ominous words of their CEO, "CSIRO still has a long way to go.” You can read up the original article here.
