CSIRO to widen Wi-Fi patent net

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 10:45

Business IT - Technology

Following a successful first wave of legal action to defend patents applicable to Wi-Fi networking, Australia's national science agency CSIRO is going after the rest of the industry.

Over the last few years, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation) has been engaged in legal action against a variety of companies selling Wi-Fi products, as the 802.11a, 11g and 11n standards rely on technology patented by the organisation in the mid 1990s.

Manufacturers of components embodying the CSIRO technology and companies using those components in their products declined the reasonable and non-discriminatory licences offered by the research organisation.

Not surprisingly, CSIRO turned to its lawyers.

April saw settlements with several companies including 3Com, Accton, Asus, Belkin, Buffalo Technologies, D-Link, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Netgear, Nintendo, SMC, and Toshiba.

The terms were not disclosed, but an aggregate of $1 billion was bandied around at the time and not denied by CSIRO.

According to a report in The Australian, CSIRO now has the rest of the industry in its sights.

The article quotes a CSIRO spokesperson as saying "We have licensed half the industry and now we're engaged in negotiations with the other half of the industry".

There's a suggestion that CSIRO will go after mobile phone vendors, among others. Wi-Fi is an increasingly common feature of higher-end handsets, including models from HTC, LG, Nokia, RIM (BlackBerry), Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and of course Apple.

Such actions do not affect the users of Wi-Fi devices, except to the extent that prices could increase slightly to offset the licensing fees.