CSIRO patent-trolls ALL OF AMERICA! With a skillful combination of nationalistic dog-whistling and misinformation, Ars Technica has created a storm of outrage against Australia with the claim that the country’s CSIRO has patent-trolled its way into American WiFi users’ pockets. At issue is the recent settlement which brings the Commonwealth Scientific and …
You're half right. The system is broken as hell and needs to be thrown out and rebuilt from the ground up with the digital age in mind, but this is NOT the first time a patent should be upheld. The cases where a patent should be upheld don't make the news all that often. They're just not as interesting as jeering at patent trolls.
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...is Our Glourious Leader's financial records for the CSIRO during the 802.11 discussion era - at about the time of the Sydney Olympics, I think the CSIRO's total budget was about $23.47
It's not the first time Australian Government & Industry indifference and reluctance to spend money has seen Australian designed products get exploited by others. For our Goverment, if it's not Sport or Old US Weapons Tech we hate spending. In the case of Australian industry if the money could be spent on buying the CEO a bigger house / car / boat / aircraft / island / media empire, that's where it will go. Heaven forbid we invest in innovation, or deity forbid, give credit where it is due.
Speaking as an Oz. It really nice to see CSIRO develop some gonads for once. Their greatest tragedy was Mortein (whatever its known as overseas) - basically the chemical system upon which all fly sprays are based. CSIRO invented that. Then.... gave it away. At least this time they're going after the prize. Go boys.
... What?
The first "Mortein" was invented in the 1870s, 50 years before CSIRO was created. The first aerosol fly spray (based on an earlier design by a Norwegian chemical engineer) was marketed in America in the 1940s, at least ten years before the first spray-can versions of Mortein.
Neither CSIRO nor Mortein mentions the other on their respective websites.
tl;dr: Where are you getting this from?
“The closest thing CSIRO ever had to a commercial product was a 'demonstration chipset' produced by Radiata, an Australian wireless company formed by ex-CSIRO employees. "
LOL. This coming from a country which grants patents based on speculative designs which either don't exist yet or even where the technologu to create them doesn't yet exist.
On my planet, that's called "Science Fiction".
"Doing the science, but leaving the commercialization to the private sector, is not patent trolling"
Sums it all up. I have been to the CSIRO in Sydney, great place to do research, when they patent something, take it seriously. "Ars Technica" suddenly reads "Arse Technica" as seen from down-under, I suppose.
and what's more, selling the technology funds more science. The model used here has the double advantage that research is partially self-funding, and there is an incentive for research into useful technologies.
Asking $4 per device is OTT but that was probably in the days of fiendishly expensive PCMCIA wireless cards when $4 (AU?) was a less outrageous fraction of the device cost.
It was also likely a starting point. people who point to the $4 per unit thing and cry "troll" need to be slapped... They've obviously never purchased anything outside a major chain store...
You start very high, your opponent starts very low, and you find common ground somewhere in the middle that you can both live on.
CSIRO did not invent "a system for overcoming multipath distortions in WiFi", they filed for a patent for using a bunch of decade old technologies, but "used in combination for computer networking". It's a particularly ludicrous "business model patent" of the style that was popular in the 90's and would have been thrown out if the case wasn't settled.
Those places where people do non-commercial science.
What is the point of a government-supported org which behaves like a private company?
Pay the professors and ditch all the non-free tech from the standards.
That said, it is fun to watch. Who has the patent on heating corn til it explodes? I owe them.
Ars lost a reader in me over this... they were a good site for some news, I really enjoyed their lulzsec coverage... but the entire article and their behaviour in the followup, and then in the comments was disgusting.
Banning people for "substance free trolling" because they DARED to call them on the biased jingoistic nature of the article? yeah that's a site I want to support.
I don't see what the issue is, CSIRO invented wifi, and they have every right to make claims on their patent .
As far as I am aware and from everything I know CSIRO scientist John O' Sullivan invented the technique behind wifi. He is the genius that worked out the complexities of the radio waves bouncing off the surrounding environment. Increasing speeds from a 300 baud modem to the incredible speeds that we obtain today. The latest wireless devices still use his theories, and if they didnt wifi would be a hell of a lot slower today.
John O' Sullivan alone worked out that rather than one packet by sending multiple packets as slightly different times, the massive environmental interference that exists could be cleaned up, thus allowing more and more packets to be sent at a vastly quicker pace.
In conjunction with the CSIRO they developed the prototype and patented it. And for some reason the rest of the world decided to ignore this and go on using John's theories without compensation.
The world of wifi would probably be a very different and at a slower pace without this.
Give John and the CSIRO the credit they are due PLEASE! if anything they should be paid more
Thankyou.
update: John o' Sullivan didnt "invent" wifi, as my previous comment suggests, this was not my intention. it was only after re reading it that i saw my mistake.
to clarify: John O'Sullivan took the existing wifi protocols and developed technologies to make it many times faster.
Again I apologise in advance for any misconceptions that my previous comment may lead to. Please blame it on my hot head and the morning coffee buzz
For those happy about this because the trolling was in your favour, well you will have to stfu when the shoe is on the other foot and one of your companies will inevitably be trolled by the same system.
The immaturity and nationalistic ignorance by australians over this issue has been disturbing.
Ignoring all the other reasons this post is wrong, the rest of the world is subjected to American patriotism and patent trolling every day. Let us enjoy this moment, and then we'll get back to paying for American goods marked up to ridiculous levels for no reason other than we're Australian (see Apple's stock pricing), or pirating our TV shows because they arrive weeks or months after they do in the US (if they arrive here at all!).
Back under your bridge, troll.
We're happy cause the shoe is on the other foot. Usually we get trolled by stupid american patents that cover the blantently obvious. Lets look at some examples
Slide to unlock
Two or more fingers on a touch screen
Using XML datastructure in a word processor
and the list goes on
The American patent system is totally broken. Does nothing but stop innovation. Patenting genes is a prize example. It's just sour grapes that the yanks have to pay for stuff they stole developed by real science instead of trolling others with BS patents.
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