Buffalo Tech Gets New Trial On Wi-Fi Patent 78
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!"
Are they expensive? (Score:4, Informative)
I paid 29 bucks for mine.
You could always get your hands on them, (Score:4, Informative)
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:You could always get your hands on them, (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Are they expensive? (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.
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.
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 :)
Re:Why these routers? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why these routers? (Score:4, Informative)
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: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....
Re:Why these routers? (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 you need to check the product VERSION in addition to model numbers.
I've heard good & bad about all the brands, basically do your research, they all have ups & downs.
If you hear anybody ranting about how great or terrible one brand is in general, they probably have some bias.
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:Why these routers? (Score:4, Informative)
I like Buffalo because:
Re:I wouldn't hold your breathe. (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.