802.11n May Never Happen Due to Patent Concerns 174
afabbro writes "The Register is reporting that the 802.11n standard is imperiled because the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization has refused to submit a Letter of Assurance, promising not to sue those who implement the standard. '...the realization that CSIRO holds essential patents, and has failed to provide a Letter of Assurance as required by the IEEE, could prevent the standard ever being finalized ... 802.11n promises to deliver a fivefold increase in speed, and double the range of 802.11g. Indeed in many cases it's already delivering something approximating that, as pre-standard kit has been available for almost a year. In May the Wi-Fi Alliance got so bored waiting for the IEEE to complete the standard that they started certifying kit as conforming to the draft, even though the final version isn't expected until 2008."
Lies and more lies (Score:3, Insightful)
Fury...building... (Score:3, Interesting)
Grah. While I'm all in favour of having Liberal (Australian right-leaning major party) stints to keep the economy chugging, this country really has been governed by the right too long - all of our public services are becoming too money-obsessed.
Re:Fury...building... (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as the CSIRO is concerned it has never been any different under Labour.
Re:Fury...building... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe. There is an old meme over here about clever research work which only gets commercialised when it leaves the country. The classic example is the black box flight recorder which was invented in Australia, but never earned much money for this country.
Because we are a small country we do tend to hold on to assets like this a little bit tighter. Or try to, anyway.
As far as living here goes, I know a few people from the USA who have migrated to Australia. They seem happy with the environment, but they lose a lot in the transition. It can be hard to buy a good house in Australia now if you sell up in the US and bring your money with you.
It is hard for me to give a better comparison than that, because I have only ever lived in one country.
Re:Fury...building... (Score:5, Informative)
"Try to" being the operative phrase.
CSIRO filed the patent on OFDM in 1992, and informed IEEE in 1997 that the method was patented and would attract royalties. American businesses including Lucent, Cisco and HP have ignored CSIRO's request for companies using the technology (which took 8 years to develop) to license IP rights.
Hypocrisy runs deep in big business.
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Re:Fury...building... (Score:4, Informative)
I think this is part of the problem, however the greater problem is that there are companies out there who are already violating patents by producing 802.11g equipment covered by CSIRO patents that STILL do not pay royalties. There was a big deal about this a while ago. Sadly, American companies seem to love to want to overlook this while screaming if somebody overseas violates their patent.
I believe that the people who make gear based on 802.11g & 802.11n should at least be honourable enough to give royalties to the people that invented the technology to enable their products (leading to their income) to exist should get something in return. That's the whole idea of patents, correct?
To boil this down, CSIRO invented the schemes to make 802.11n work. Companies want to use this technology to make money, but don't want to share any of it with the inventor. This sounds like perfect use of the patent system.
IEEE vs CSIRO (Score:3, Insightful)
To boil this down, CSIRO invented the schemes to make 802.11n work.
No. CSIRO invented the schemes. IEEE members developed 802.11N using the schemes, believing CSIRO would cooperate. If that had ever been in doubt, the standard would have been developed along different lines, avoiding CSIRO's patents.
Whether this is a misunderstanding or a ploy by CSIRO will eventually be clear, but to suggest that the companies supporting the standard are trying to cheat CSIRO out of royalties it deserves is either naiv
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--jeffk++
Re:Fury...building... (Score:5, Interesting)
So no, they don't realise this fact, because the Australian public don't seem to care, or those that do are scared of politics.
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Basically, my question is: why are you concerned about government transparency in Australia?
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But it really sur
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I may not be the best source for this, but out of all the non-geek people I've met and discussed politics with, and all the physical (read: not online) publications I've read, I never hear about copyright/patent reform. My experience isn't that broad, but I can certainly tell that the issue hasn't really penetrated the voter's psyche. I guess people
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Re:Fury...building... (Score:4, Interesting)
Australia (read Government of the day) has for many years believed in what is called the "level playing field" the problem was Australia was always at the bottom, now the "shoe is on the other foot" the Government is a little confused especially since they should be pushing for royalties. It must be noted that CSIRO does not set royalties that is up to the Australian Government.
Re:Fury...building...(reply to sig) (Score:2)
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I'm one of the (~20 million) people who pays for the CSIRO, so don't be calling me greedy for wanting some payback.
Some Context (Score:5, Insightful)
As an American whose tax dollars fund (D)ARPA, I demand payback from all other nations using the Internet. Also, I think the good citizens of California whose tax dollars helped fund BSD would like some too.
Re:Some Context (Score:5, Funny)
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So
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Infrastructure is different from technology. Technology is free to share. Infrastructure costs money to maintain. Anyone is free to use the technology of the Internet without paying the US a dime (ignoring the problem of getting a copy of the BSD source code which is most easily available over the Internet). It is, however, expected and reasonable for companies in the US to charge something for use of their infrastructure. Whether the rates charged are reasonable, though, is another question.
<fla
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So petition your government to ensure that the money that other countries are paying to the US gets spread around, and not just hoarded by some greedy US companies. And while you're at it, I think it would be fair if you suggested to them that they should share the load.
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But you are getting payback by getting affordable technology that came from the money you paid to the CSIRO. If the CSIRO started charging big royalties, then the prices of the technology that you paid for would go up, so it would be defeating the tax money you already spent.
A lot of similar things happen here in the USA. A good portion of the research that pharmaceutical companies use c
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CSIRO Are Not To Blame (Score:4, Insightful)
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1)the CISRO is part of the Australian government. It is not a corporation.
2) the CISRO submitted it's work to an INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS BODY. par of submitting technology to a STANDARDS BODY is the release for ANYONE to duplicate the STANDARD free of charge. If you don't want your technology to be used by others unless they pay you then don't submitt it to a STANDARDS BODY it is your choice.
They had a choice have their technology used by others, or have them use an
Re:CSIRO Are Not To Blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Standards are not free-of-charge by definition. A standard is exactly what the word says: a specification that you can choose to adhere to or not. Each international standard body can define its own rules as to what technology an IP limitations they will consider. If you don't want to adhere to a particular standard because there's a patent involved, you simply don't. It's your choice.
Now, arguably, a proposed standard stands a bigger chance of success if it is not subject to restrictive patents, but that in turn is the choice of the inventors of the technology. If the technology really is of outstanding quality, the developers may want to take that risk. Again, that is their choice, not yours.
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The problem in this particular case that the required formal statement that they will not sue companies making devices in accordance with the spec also sort of kills the whole patent for them. In order to succesfully "request a royalty per device from manufacturers, and go home" they have to be able to sue those manufacturers who don't pay. This is true even if they were to price that royalty in the micropayments range. It's even true if they were to just ask for a one-time 10$ fee per manufacturer. (Of co
Re:CSIRO Are Not To Blame (Score:5, Insightful)
No that's not even vaguely true.
CSIRO disclosed the patent to the IEEE in 1997, and IEEE acknowledged that part of the technology used in the new 802.11 standards was covered under CSIRO's patents. The IEEE asked CSIRO, as it does all companies that hold patents on technology used in a standard, if it wanted to license the technology to the industry for free or if it wanted to charge a reasonable fee for the license. CSIRO indicated it wanted to charge a fee for the use of its technology.
Economic loss due to patents. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just one example. Now the public may very well be deprived of this new technology just because of these patent concerns. So in a very resource-wasteful move, we may very well need to derive another technology that duplicates 802.11n, not for any technical reason, but just to satisfy the legal conditions of a mere document. That's clearly harmful for the economy as a whole. Those resources could have been put towards developing new technologies, rather than reimplementing what already existed.
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It is not that we will be deprived of this technology because of patents. It is the other way around. This technology would not exist without patents. Organizations would not spend money designing and researching technology if they didn't have a guarantee that they could sell that technology.
Patents and the Global Public Good (Score:4, Insightful)
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It is perfectly reasonable for CSIRO, in this context, to demand royalties. What's the point of patents otherwise ?
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Quoth our James Madison "To promote the progress of science and useful arts." Specifically, to pay the fixed cost necessary to produce an invention by allowing the inventor to temporarily charge monopoly prices. Publicly funded research is a nice alternative when the patent approach is less than optimal at benefiting the public good. Subsidized research does not need patent protection because the subsidy has paid the fixed cost. Asking the CSIRO to support itsel
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Do you have any evidence to support this claim at all? Perhaps an example of a time where people were developing modern technology in a patent-free environment? Wait - that never happened so you can't *possibly* have a
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Absolutely right. You've just proven that property rights should be abolished, since people are going to continue making things, even though they'll just be stolen.
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Whereas making conclusory statements without any support is not, I suppose.
The economic reasons for protecting intellectual property are the same as those for protecting tangible property. In the real world, substantial labor is invested into creating a marketable product, and that labor will only be systematically invested by those seeking a return on investment, i.e., a profit. Where is the incentive to invest in
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"Mr. Westinghouse, Mr. Edison has already developed DC electric power transmission. Creating another power transmission technology with the same power capacity does not add economic value."
"Thank you Mr. Tesla. I'm off to buy railroad stock."
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"Still economically speaking the development of DC electric power tra
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You're right. It IS always cheaper to steal. But we rarely hear economists and businesspeople talk about the economic loss that property laws bring.
what nonsense (Score:2)
Has it crossed your mind that the CSIRO developed this technology and dese
Re:Economic loss due to patents. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ask me, we can, with a few adjustments, get by just fine without them.
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Maybe in 1780 although I have some doubts about that. Today? The number of technologies that can't be reverse engineered if there is a need to do so is surely very small.
Also, today's marketplace moves at a much faster pace than that of two centuries ago. Simply having a lead of a year or two by virtue of being the inventor conveys much of the advantage that a
Organisations don't get bored (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it's harder to figure out anthromorphism doesn't apply to organisations, since they're made out of people, but can you honestly imagine the following in the documents: "Today we voted to start delivering draft-based wifi kits, because we were bored".
If you'll look for reasons, look for logistics, money, deadlines and contracts.
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Wasted work (Score:3, Insightful)
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Strictly speaking, companies do not submit work to the IEEE, individuals do. IEEE 802 rules states clearly that people attend as individuals.
Entities with patents essential to standards are encouraged to subm
Fine by me... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Money will make it happen (Score:4, Interesting)
Total FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
These are real patents that lay the mathematical/technological foundation for how pretty much all wireless networking works currently. Saying that CSIRO has no right to defend these patents would be like saying CISCO is morally obliged to give away all their routers because we all depend on the internet and we need routers for the internet to work.
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CSIRO should hold patents to prevent corporations from patenting the tech for themselves, but not to make a profit.
All the engineers etc were paid to think this up. After that the invented tech is a public resource. A govt. agency should not behave like a corporation.
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Re:Total FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
The 'public' who want this resource are foreign companies that didn't pay for the research and whose only contribution to Australia is flogging us goods that violate our patents.
If the CSIRO was acting like a corporation they would have already patent-trolled 802.11 out of existence.
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As I sit here, reading Slashdot on my laptop's TFT via 802.11g, I sit and think how none of this would be possible without exploiting the Australian taxpayer.
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The government (and government sponsored entities) has no business acting like a private enterprise. The pursuit of exclusive wealth should be left to business.
The government should develop technologies and applied research which is to big or too risky or too long term to interest private investors, and be happy when private enterprises find ways of making money from the fruits of that research.
I say this as a dyed in the wool, lifetime libe
No difference between USA and Australia (Score:2)
Unlike DARPA, the CSIRO does not have an endless pipe of defense cash. They research a range of fundamental and applied areas and there's an expectation that profits from industry partnerships and commercialisation (like patents) will be used to multiply research contributions. Why should a country's taxpayers fund government research agencies devel
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Familiar story (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is the patent system actually doing something useful. CSIRO created the standard in expectation of being able to sell it. Now patent rights are preventing others from stealing it. That's promoting the useful arts.
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Products would be cheaper without paying for patent rights, but that would prevent invention, wouldn't it?
On the whole, I'd say no. You can look at the software industry before there were software patents, and invention happened on a booming scale. Lots of inventors made money from a first-mover advantage. Some just did it for the sheer pleasure and shared their work with others.
CSIRO created the standard in expectation of being able to sell it.
Since they are tax-payer funded, they really shouldn't. And if they didn't invent it, somebody else would have, even without patents.
Where's the strong evidence that people won't invent without patents? Even for expensive stuff l
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Another misleading lead in... (Score:2)
This is a story about the very weak possibility that 802.11n may never be 'standardized' NOT that it will never "happen". It's already happened. I've been using 802.11n on all my home computers for months now.
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I've been using 802.11n on all my home computers for months now.
No, you haven't... You are using an implementation of a not yet approved standard that could become 802.11n. The "standard" may still change and you may be able to upgrade your hardware with a firmware upgrade if that happens. However, the manufacturer of your gear is in no way obliged to do so, after all, it couldn't sell it as 802.11n gear, since the 802.11n standard isn't yet accepted.
A standard, by definition, does not change....New r
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Looks like it is time for 802.11o (Score:2)
Can't we just be like China? (Score:2)
This is like one of those silly games you play in igh school psych. If everybody simply ignored international IP, there would be more reason to scrap the current system.
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Besides, why should you want to ignore the issue here? This is not a patent-mongering Eolas-like VC-funded private company or a 1-click patent w
Patent law is supposed to ENCOURAGE progress (Score:2, Insightful)
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And Australia signed the US constitution when?
Patience young padawans.... (Score:2)
well, ... (Score:2)
why? (Score:2)
I mean, honestly, this standard has been in draft for years and has been delayed repeatedly and now this? You would imagine the bureaucrats could at least manage the bureaucracy but I guess not.
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Does it matter? (Score:2)
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Re:Go Aussie! (Score:4, Funny)
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The Kiwis have about 43.1 million sheep, or roughly 12 sheep for every person in New Zealand.
Australia has about 110 million sheep, or about 5 sheep per person. Additionally, more Welsh migrants settled in New Zealand than Australia.
With all due respect to our south-sea pom mates, I think it's pretty clear which nation leads the world in sheep-shagging...
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But, to answer your question, the extra cash from royalties/lawsuits would help CSIRO, but not the scientific community at large. It is the community at large that helps progression...to assume that progress would be helped by paying royalties to a single inventor, the question is: is that vendor *uniquely* p