Australian Gov’t Agency Settles Wi-Fi Patent Disputes

Australia's CSIRO has reached settlements with all the companies it sued over infringing on its WiFi-related patents...although the terms are secret.

The Australian government technology agency CSIRO has reportedly reached settlements with all the companies it had been suing for patent infringement regarding a technology built into 802.11g and later Wi-Fi wireless networking. The patent covers portions of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) implementation that first appeared in 802.11g. Although aspects of the patent were openly questioned by other players in the industry, CSIRO doggedly pursued 14 technology companies over patent infringement, including Japanese-owned Buffalo Technology, which had its products banned from the U.S. market for a time in part because CSIRO won a judgement against Buffalo.

Although CSIRO sued some 14 companies for infringement—and some of those companies, in turn, countersued CSIRO—the long-running case never made it to court, apparently in part because CSIRO wasn’t asking for exorbitant royalty fees; that meant the cost of negotiating a settlement with CSIRO was likely far less than the cost of taking the case to trial. Industry watchers were skeptical how well CSIRO’s rather broad patent would hold up in court. Terms of CSIRO’s settlements with Wi-Fi equipment makers weren’t released, but the agency apparently intends to put money from the settlements into research, same as it would with commercial implementations of any of the technology it develops.