CSIRO injunction halts Buffalo sales
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted June 20th 2007 6:02AM
posted June 20th 2007 6:02AM
As we reported back in November, Australian company CSIRO has been on the offensive in an attempt to establish their role in the creation of WiFi. Last Friday, CSRIO won another round in the battle by bringing an injunction against Buffalo, promptly halting sale of products in the US and making it very difficult for Buffalo to continue scoring tons of easy money from 802.11a/g-based gear. Buffalo is naturally expected to appeal, but this is pretty clearly a litmus test case for the long list of companies CSRIO has its sights set on -- so who knows what fates are in store for the likes of 3Com, Accton, ASUS, Belkin, D-Link, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Marvell, Microsoft, Netgear, Nintendo, SMC, and Toshiba, all of which have their own case pending with today's court victor.[Thanks, Macris A]
CSRIO isn't a company...
From the CSRIOs wiki pedia article...
he Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is the national government body for scientific research in Australia. It was founded in 1926 originally as the Advisory Council of Science and Industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRO
Nice.
It's about time us Aussies got some credit for something.
And yes, calling the CSIRO company is kinda like calling the CIA a company...i.e. stupid.
How can a company be sued for adopting an IEEE standard?
It's not about the standard itself, it's about who created the standard. 802.11 encountered alot of problems back when it was first introduced, many devices had problems working with each other (almost like Bluetooth stacks still are =( ). Anyhow, 802.11b was pioneered by a good few companies (or groups) and they formed the 'WiFi Alliance'. The members of 'WiFi Alliance' were the ones given the trademarks to the WiFi standard.
What is CSIRO actually claiming here? I don't really recall much coming from them when it comes to WiFi and I can't even find anything on their page about it.
Since Buffalo makes the chips for the Wii and DS, does that mean there is an injunction against those being sold in the US, too?
Microsoft had a hand in creating the standard for DNS SRV records (RFC 2782) -- does that mean they can sue other companies that use SRV records? What about all the other "standards" that were developed with the help of other companies or institutions? My God, this could open up a huge can'o'worms if CSIRO's win sticks.
SiLO: CSIRO own a patent for wireless technology.
It's intellectual property, and CSIRO lead the way and own this particular piece of IP. Seems fair they're paid out.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking/CSIRO-hit-with-wifi-patent-suit/2005/05/19/1116361656580.html
From the Article:
The patent, US Patent 5,487,069, was filed on November 23, 1993, and granted on January 23, 1996. The inventors were John D. O'Sullivan, Graham R. Daniels, Terence M.P. Percival, Diethelm I. Ostry and John F. Deane.
The patent is for a wireless LAN, a peer-to-peer wireless LAN, a wireless transceiver and a method of transmitting data, all of which are capable of operating at frequencies in excess of 10 GHz and in multipath transmission environments.