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Buffalo Tech Gets New Trial On Wi-Fi Patent
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Oct 07, 2008 02:52 PM
from the oh-give-me-a-home-router dept.
from the oh-give-me-a-home-router dept.
MrLint writes "It's been a long, nearly two years of silence since CSIRO won a patent battle against Buffalo Tech, causing an injunction preventing the Austin company from selling wireless routers. On September 19, 2008, a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that CSIRO patent claims are invalid and Buffalo is getting a new trial. With any luck, we will be able to get our grubby hands on low-cost Wi-Fi routers again!"
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Hardware: CSIRO Wireless Patent Reaffirmed In US Court 147 comments
An anonymous reader writes ""The CSIRO has won a landmark US legal battle against Buffalo Technology, under which it could receive royalties from every producer of wireless local area network (WLAN) products worldwide." From the article: "The patent, granted to CSIRO in 1996, encompasses elements of the 802.11a/g wireless technology that is now an industry standard. It stems from a system developed by CSIRO in the early '90s, 'to exchange large amounts of information wirelessly at high speed, within environments such as offices and homes,' said a CSIRO spokeswoman."
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Are they expensive? (Score:4, Informative)
I paid 29 bucks for mine.
DD-WRT (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Did it come with DD-WRT pre-installed? Buffalo's come with DD-WRT pre-installed and cost is typically slightly cheaper than LinkSys, D-Link or Netgear.
You could always get your hands on them, (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You could always get your hands on them, (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:1)
You don't need to circumvent anything to get a Buffalo router if all you want to do is run dd-wrt. There are tons of routers supported, including the 2 I just had laying around from way before I'd ever heard of it.
Just because you decide to upgrade the firmware to DD-WRT does not mean that the hardware you run it on isn't important. Personally, I purchased a WRT54G-TM (as opposed to attempting to get a specific version of another model) because I know it has 32M ram and 8M flash, so that I could use the mega image. Ignoring ram/flash sizes, there are still other factors related to the hardware that can affect someone's choice of router. I'm not saying Buffalo is anything special, I don't know; I've never used them
Re:You could always get your hands on them, (Score:5, Informative)
High quality and high power. the HP versions go up to 350mw easily.
they kick the crap out of the other ones out there. Except for the new linksys 600N that's my new darling with fast processor, gobs of flash and ram and takes to DD-WRT quite nicely....
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
....or live in Europe where the patents involved do not exist ....
Re: (Score:2)
I picked up a new Asus WL-500G because my prior linksys was crapping out daily like that. The new Asus did the same thing out of the box. I read somewhere on the net that it was because of bad power. I put the router and cable modem on an UPS and have been 100% stable (knocking on wood) ever since.
I wouldn't hold your breathe. (Score:4, Informative)
The Federal Circuit only reversed summary judgment as to obviousness of CSIRO's patents. This means that Buffalo Tech. will have a chance to make its case on that issue alone. You see, based on the silence of the BT press release on the other issues against BT on summary judgment, I would have to conclude that the Federal Circuit upheld those.
I also have to add that the lawsuit is filed in the plaintiff-friendly (to put it softly) E.D. Texas.
Re:I wouldn't hold your breathe. (Score:5, Interesting)
The district court found (on summary judgment) that the patent was not anticipated, valid, not obvious, and infringed. Even for the E.D. Tex., that's a lot to hold on summary judgment, and usually indicates it's a pretty blatant case. The Fed. Cir. upheld all of those findings except obviousness. It did not hold (contrary to the summary) that the patent was invalid. It held that there was an issue of material fact as to obviousness that the district court would need to try to a fact finder. If the district court finds, on remand, that the patent is non-obvious, then Buffalo loses.
I know there's a huge anti-patent sentiment around here, but patents are my bread and butter, and I tend to believe that there are such things as valid patents. I haven't looked at this patent specifically, but if somebody has a slam dunk argument for why the specific claims at issue are obvious, I'd honestly be interested to hear it. I hate obvious patent too---probably more than you, because I have to litigate against them, fighting the presumption that they're valid with lots of money on the line. But this sounds more like a case where a lot of people are upset that they couldn't get something they liked because it infringed a possibly-valid patent. That is really just the price we pay to have patents at all. Some of the people here will disagree with the whole concept(many will accompany their disagreement with vitriol and poor grammar). But I don't think that a trade secret-only world would be any better.
So somebody tell me, what is obvious about this patent? I'd be interested to know.
Parent
Re:I wouldn't hold your breathe. (Score:4, Interesting)
I just happened to be involved [jwdalton.com] in the university project that produced this patent. The patent was filed before I got involved, so I can't comment on the perceived obviousness at the time of filing (or any other aspect of the filing). From personal experience, in 1995 most people I spoke to about what I was doing didn't "get" it and questioned why anyone would bother doing such a thing. It's hard to tell how much of that was due to the technology being non-obvious, or how much was due to applications being non-obvious.
It's interesting that there is only one name in common between the list of authors on the patent [uspto.gov] and the paper [sss-mag.com], and that person isn't the lead author on the paper. I guess that might be because the paper is about the second implementation. The first implementation, on which the patent is presumably based, was done in software in non-real time (burst mode). If judging obviousness, it would be worth comparing with the HiperLAN [wikipedia.org] project and the work that went into it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I could accept a patent system IFF there was a presumption that independent re-invention proved obviousness and deliberate disclosure of one's own patents without a WARNING/NDA in advance was a crime (to prevent patent holders from trying to poison the well).
I would also say that if a competent engineer in the field couldn't replicate the invention without additional research just by reading the patent, it's void.
To me, this actually sounds like some worked their butts off to actually do something useful an
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your ideas sound good but are probably unworkable. Independent re-invention does not prove obviousness, as it happens all the time even for very difficult subjects (e.g. in maths, physics, not just engineering). The first to invent should get the credit as in research.
Your second point, I wholeheartedly agree with however. Patents are supposed to make something "patent", i.e. totally obvious to make with the knowledge of the patent. Some patents are like that but not all.
The third point is the opposite of r
Re: (Score:2)
The first to invent should get the credit as in research.
Credit in the academic sense is fine. 20 years of monopoly is not. If two people work their butts off for 10 years to make something work and finally, both have the eureka moment within hours of each other, why should one be entitled to 20 years of monopoly profits and the other be out in the cold? Notably, it's not unusual for independent discoverers to receive co-credit in the academic world.
It really doesn't matter if the two efforts happen at the same time if the second inventor truly has no knowledge (
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a presumption, but that is one of the factors of obviousness a court can consider.
Most countries have an "absolute novelty" requirement. If you disclose your patent publicly before you file, you can't get a patent. The U.S. has a one-year "grace
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a presumption, but that is one of the factors of obviousness a court can consider.
Exactly. I believe it should be a presumption. That alone could save millions in litigation costs.
Most countries have an "absolute novelty" requirement. If you disclose your patent publicly before you file, you can't get a patent. The U.S. has a one-year "grace period," which I think is pretty reasonable. And most patents get published 18 months after their earliest filing date.
I'm talking about after the fact. If you know I'm working on the same thing you are, it's not fair if you are allowed to mail me a copy of your notebook on your way to the patent office in order to destroy my independent inventor status.
I haven't looked at this case in detail, but my guess is that it's more than a "passing resemblance." The court found infringement on summary judgment, and the Fed. Cir. upheld it. That has to be a pretty compelling case for infringement. If somebody infringes your valid and enforceable patent, you're entitled to legal relief, even if the other guy worked really hard.
I would say that it strongly depends on the other guy's knowledge of my work. Interestingly, my argument is the same as the one commonly used to support patents in general: peop
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The CSIRO is Australia's 'Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation' - they pretty much do pure research, mostly government funded. There's branches of it that do applied research with industry alliances. I'm pretty sure the documented research of these guys provided the slam dunk.
Time Capsule like NAS devices (Score:2, Interesting)
One product Buffalo used to sell before this injunction were hard drives with a wireless interface on them, similar to Apple's Time Capsules. This was before Apple's product hit the market. I wondered why this company was barred from selling these while Apple was free to do so.
I hope Buffalo wins this round.
Why these routers? (Score:2)
What makes them so great?
I run a cheap Belkin router. Nothing special but not that expensive.
Re:Why these routers? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, for whatever it's worth, I've installed a LOT of wireless routers for people over the years - and I learned to generally AVOID Belkin.
If you've got one that's working well for you, great. But on the whole, they were known for having sub-standard firmware in their devices. I remember, for example, when 802.11g was the "latest and greatest thing", Belkin had a "g" capable router that had a major bug in the firmware, preventing any "g" devices from connecting to it if it was configured to also allow backwards compatibility with "b" devices.
They did release a firmware update to correct that, but you still had a relatively weak/limited set of configuration options in the product.
I also recall finding Belkin wi-fi routers to have worse-than-average range.
People seemed to generally like Buffalo because they were priced a little bit lower than the competition, especially on things like wireless access points (which seem to generally be a big ripoff to this day, since they cost 2x to 3x more than a full-blown router, which can be programmed to function as an access point anyway!). That and they gave good performance for the money, and had better than average web-based interfaces.
Parent
Re:Why these routers? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Belkin, Netgear, Linksys, Buffalo, & D-Link are your major home/small office brands.
They all have stinkers, they all have decent models.
In general however, Netgear tends to come in at the bottom of the price AND quality range, with a few in the mid-range of quality, Belkin is sort of like this as well, but maybe a little better.
D-Link & Linksys tend to have more models that are average or slightly above average, both in price & quality. D-Link had some firmware issues a while back, and Linksys y
Re:Why these routers? (Score:4, Informative)
I like Buffalo because:
Parent
Re:Why these routers? (Score:5, Informative)
- They are quality routers
- You can flash them with some excellent software
- Sync them up so you have longer wi-fi distance running through you house, apt, etc.
- Their range tends to be larger than other routers.
Belkins, netgear, Linksys always seem to have died on me, but my Buffalos are still roaming -bad pun intended :)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
From my experience, I have set up a network with about 10 Belkin routers, they didn't have great range and the WDS on them was sometimes "shakey" (probably due to range/antenna issues perhaps). I was also having to restart some of these too often. I tried to put DD-WRT on some of them, and after bricking a few, it was time to move to something else.
I then tried to switch over half of the network to Linksys ones, but they didn't do the WDS for some reason at all. I returned all of those.
Now comes the
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention that, not long before they were hit with the trial, the company (Buffalo) had started openly supporting the dd-wrt project with money and hardware, and there were even rumors that dd-wrt would become the official firmware on Buffalo routers.
Re:Why these routers? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I only have 1 Buffalo router, a WHR-G54S, and it is mounted to a pole, outside [flickr.com] in the sun, rain, snow and ice (it is in Colorado, so that isn't a mutually exclusive list). It is fed a little bit too much voltage over 100' of sprinkler cable, in a telcom case. At this point it has been there for over a year.
Current uptime: 123 days
The only issues I ever have with the router is antenna misalignment from my other 19 dBi antennas being accidentally moved.
WTF with reading comprehension (Score:5, Informative)
"On September 19, 2008, a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that CSIRO patent claims are invalid and Buffalo is getting a new trial."
The Circuit court did no such thing - it ruled that the judge had erred in issuing a summary judgment, and it needed to go back to trial. NOWHERE in the link does it say that the Appellate Court ruled on the validity of the patent.
Re:WTF with reading comprehension (Score:5, Funny)
this is /.
these facts are not the ones you are looking for.....
*waves hand*
Parent
Buffalo AirStation (Score:3, Interesting)
I own a Buffalo AirStation wireless ethernet converter. Best wireless device since the WiFi router.
Before you get too excited... (Score:3, Interesting)
You may want to check out the case pending in the Western District of Wisconsin where Fujitsu, LG and Philips have sued Netgear [justia.com] under the following 3 patents: 4975952 [google.com] (claims 1, 4 and 6), 6018642 [google.com] (claims 2, 6, and 8), and 6469993 [google.com] (claims 1, 2, 3, 6, 21, 25, and 26).
Plaintiffs are using the stupid theory that the 802.11 standard infringes the patents therefore Netgear's products also infringe. The plaintiffs have accused more than 100 Netgear products.
Netgear is the sole defendant in the case. Some details from Netgear's SEC filing [secinfo.com]:
If you want to fight patent garbage, buy Netgear products.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
All I have to say is "wow." That is both a crazy theory (so much for proving product to claim) and some totally irrelevant art. That 6469993 patent is really ugly. It looks like a literal translation of the original Korean application.
I wish I had moderation points to get you out of Anonymous Coward hell.
Go Netgear.
Buffalo = good quality at a great price (Score:1)
Almost need a poll to explain it (Score:2)
This is another me-too-I-love-my-Buffalos-over-all-other-brands post.
I think a lot of us, me most definitely, want to share the goodness that is Buffalo for those unfamiliar.
It would be nice to have non-front-page polls for this sort of thing - so others could see how many of us speak from experience and highly recommend Buffalo products.
Nothing wrong with slagging a product that sucks or proselytizing for one that cures common woes. I value /. opinions more than I can say.
Re: (Score:1)
highly recommend Buffalo products.
Not a router, but I purchased a Buffalo Wireless USB dongle. I had a good many issues getting the driver to work on XP, and their website was impossible to find any driver updates. I could not get it to work on Linux at all. So one experience has left a bad taste in my mouth for the company.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure of your time frame, but just in case you still have it, maybe their website is better now:
http://www.buffalotech.com/support/downloads/ [buffalotech.com]
If it's a discontinued model:
http://site2.buffalotech.com/support/downloads2.php [buffalotech.com]
I assume that you're referring to XP SP2 - my buddies and I had a lot of various USB problems prior to that. Sorry if that's obvious beyond all recognition, just covering bases.
Using mine with Tomato (Score:3, Insightful)
Got mine just before... (Score:1)
...they were taken off the shelf. This WHR-G125 is *awesome*. Great range and just seems to be quite reliable hardware. Wasn't too bad on the price, either. I just wish OpenWRT had full support for it's processor, but I can deal with Tomato/DDWRT :)
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
They're only low-cost because they aren't paying the inventors for their work.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
proof that /. is blatently anti-patent (Score:3, Interesting)
"With any luck, we will be able to get our grubby hands on low-cost Wi-Fi routers again!"
a completely valid patent (it's for a hardware implementation, and was non-obvious at the time) and /. hopes it's overturned. I'm happy to agree that software patents have no place in this world, and the patent system needs an overhaul, but this is ridiculous. you're a bunch of hypocrites, getting all worked up when china ignores US IP when to make cheap products, but then you turn around and do the exact same thing to the australians. lame
CSIRO didn't start the fight, but will finish it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for breaking IP if its for personal use, or to increase the scope of the research.
But in this case its a massive company being greedy! Not paying its due to a non profit organisation devoted to research. Who developed wi-fi when no one else was really interested in it.
That to me is analogous to the open source movement, especially so when you consider that Buffalo sued CSIRO first.
Re:CSIRO didn't start the fight, but will finish i (Score:3, Informative)
CSIRO is an Aussie Government research institute. They come up with a lot of awesome technologies used around the world and the money is channeled back into R&D. Australia has so few research labs CSIRO is one of the few that is still around. I hope they win because the work they do is outstanding and they're one of the last bastions of creative development in Australia.
Re: (Score:2)
CSIRO is also the reason that 802.11n is in perma-draft status.
Buffalo routers sucked for me (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to buy their dual band n router before the injunction hit because it was one of only 2 dual band Ns available at the time, and the specs were impressive.
Re: (Score:2)
I've had one of the Buffalo routers for around 2 years now (the WHR-G54S), and have never had any significant problems with it - works fine for daily use hooked up to 2 PCs, a laptop, a Wii, and a DS.
The Linksys router I had before that turned into an unreliable piece of junk about 6 months after purchase - all the problems you apparently had with the Buffalo.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't really know, just did a bit of basic Googling and found the following references.
Engadget's report [engadget.com] of the 2006 ruling says:
Considering their recent victory, CSIRO's pending cases against Intel, Dell, Microsoft, HP, and Netgear definitely have roots now, and if judges continue to rule in the Aussies' favor, the big boys could be shelling out "hundreds of millions of dollars" in back pay to cover their wrongs.
This suggests that the CSIRO already has cases pending against various manufacturers, and the Buffalo ruling added some legitimacy.
But, a CSIRO press release [csiro.au] regarding the 2006 ruling says:
The court has said that patent cases brought against CSIRO by Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Netgear should be transferred to the court which is already familiar with the CSIRO patent infringement case in the Eastern District of Texas.
So apparently the CSIRO may have been on the receiving end of legal action from those companies, not the initiator of it:
[CSIRO Chief Executive] Dr Garrett said that the California cases started in May 2005 because Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Netgear sued CSIRO, asking the court to declare that their products did not infringe CSIRO's US WLAN patent and that CSIRO's patent was invalid.
I'm not sure whether CSIROs action against Buffalo was taken before or a