22 Companies Sued Over Wi-Fi Patents 219
Newer Guy writes "Wi-LAN, another patent holding company, has sued 22 companies that make or sell wireless routers. Defendants include Apple. Atheros, Belkin, Best Buy, Buffalo, Dell, HP, Intel, and Lenovo. Wi-LAN has a portfolio of more than 280 issued or pending patents." Of course the two patent suits were filed in Marshall, Texas.
interesting here that -- (Score:2, Interesting)
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And again (Score:3, Insightful)
Those who can't, sue.
Re:And again (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wi-LAN is a real company with technologies and hardware that they've been working on for the better part of 20 years. They were some of the originals in wireless networking, doing real research, and D-Link seems to genuinely have infringed on their patents.
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They failed to maintain a significant market share and are now a gutted litigation machine with no products to speak of.
They are in the same category as SCO, once a significant player, now a miserable failure of an organization that is resorting to patent trash to try and make a buck.
Re:And again (Score:4, Insightful)
Cisco's payment and licencing sends a very strong message to those faced with this new series of suits.
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How can a site so full of anal programmers manage to have people who can't manage little details?
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There are "The Americas".
"North America"
"South America"
"Central America"
&
"America"
Oddly enough the BBC manages to make these distinctions.
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"Sorry Eurodude - They're Canadian not American. They live in my neighbourhood."
If the US were to get rid of software patents, this wouldn't be happening.
Let them sue in Texas. Let them ALL sue in Texas, clog up the system so bad that it stops working ocmpletely. Texas judges who hear patent cases have an average of 191 cases each - keep piling them on. Once it gets to the point where cases take 15, 20, or 30 years to com
Re:And again (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And again (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Texas now. From what I've read, the reason that patent trolls like to file in the Eastern Texas District Federal Court in Marshall is that juries have historically been very sympathetic to patent holding plaintiffs, for whatever reason. The first cases filed in Marshall IIRC involved Texas Instruments and of course TI was counting on the home court advantage (although why Marshall instead of a Federal court closer to Dallas is beyond me. Maybe it's the lure of the Annual Fire Ant Festival). Apparently after TI's win(s), Marshall became known as the place to file if you had a patent case.
Having also lived in California, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Alabama, I'm pretty sure I could find several other Federal district courts in which to file in those states and get pretty much the same sort of jury, but Marshall was there first and got the reputation. Plus, they have the Fire Ant Festival and those other states don't. Never underestimate the draw of the Fire Ant Festival.
Interesting page here explaining the situation with Marshall:
http://www.marshall-chamber.com/pages/inthenews.php [marshall-chamber.com]
_ _ _ _ _
A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
—Stephen Wright
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"...funeral homes. "We have seven. Four for blacks and three for whites," Ms. Mauthe said, matter-of-factly."
Jesus Christ! It's 2007 and these people are still segregating their funeral homes? WTF!?!
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Local rules + pro-plaintiff bias (Score:4, Informative)
I must assume that building houses a court very friendly to the patent trolls, probably someone ignorant of technology enough to not recognize obviousness and prior art in the tech sector.
The primary reason is that a few years ago the ED Texas set itself up specifically to be a venue for these kinds of cases. In 2002 there were 32 patent cases in ED Texas. In 2006 there were over 10x that number [techlawforum.net]. They've developed a set of local rules that favor rapid resolution of cases. If you're a smaller patent troll going up against a larger patent holder, you want a speedy resolution. Otherwise, the big patent holder can bleed you dry with motion after motion, and extended discovery. The judges in ED Texas aren't idiots, and from what I've heard, the jurors aren't either.
Still, the combination of local rules and a pro-plaintiff bias add up to a very favorable venue for trolls.
Who's missing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cisco (who also owns Linksys) is missing from the list of companies, despite being one of the biggest players in the wi-fi market. If they have already licensed the patents in question, that is a very important detail that should be explored.
On the other hand, if Cisco has also been ignoring those patents, and the patent troll in question is not attacking Cisco, there is probably a very interesting reason.
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Re:Who's missing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who's missing? (Score:4, Informative)
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How melodramatic. That's their job, that's what they're paid for.
Universities, and individual academics, who double dip and come up with bullshit excuses about why they should be able to retain the benefits of taxpayer funded work should be given a swift boot up the backside.
You want to keep the work? YOU PAY FOR IT.
---
The name "Copy Right" is incorrect. It's real
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How melodramatic. That's their job, that's what they're paid for.
Universities, and individual academics, who double dip and come up with bullshit excuses about why they should be able to retain the benefits of taxpayer funded work should be given a swift boot up the backside.
You want to keep the work? YOU PAY FOR IT.
Maybe, you really have to examine their contracts. If it does not outline provisions for assigning any byproducts of their work to the government then in fact it's not part of their job. Grants fund these academic researchers and different grants come with different strings. This might be private or public funding. There is no guarantee it's your tax dollars. A part of his salary is likely tax dollars but that is for "teaching" services. Grants come with their own strings but if you wish you can push for p
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This was the IP policy at my university:
Staff: Own nothing.
Students (undergrad and grad): Own everything except a) commissioned works and b) works made while receiving pay from the university or another entity.
Faculty: Own everything except a) commissioned works and b) explicitly funded works, in which they retain some degree of ownership. I'm sure they have various other ways to turn the work of professors into money, such as publication agreements and lectures, but by and large professors receive ma
Re:Who's missing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The University of Calgary has a wholly-owned company called University Technologies International (UTI) which exists to assist academics in obtaining patents, licensing new technologies, and attracting the attention of investors for seed money for start-ups -- something I would imagine pretty much any university does, these days.
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And if by invented you mean scribbled out a few algorithms, tested them on a simulator and published a paper or two on it, then yes, they did invent the techniques.
However, if by invented you mean designed and built prototypes, tested them in the real world, integrated them into existing products and finally brought them to market, then no, they did not i
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Re:Who's missing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish we had journalists instead of just reporters.
Re:Who's missing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because articles written by journalists are complex and potentially difficult to read! That could alienate a sizable part of your potential audience!
Besides, its much easier to produce "to catch a predator" over and over again, then pass it off as journalism, than it is to convince people that real news stories can't be contained in simple, bite-sized nuggets.
Re:Who's missing? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I hope they
Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause it sure looks like neither the best interests of the country and its citizens, nor general sanity are enough to get them to do anything. Here's hoping there's enough pressure from this to get some corruption going in our favor.
And, yes, I know that's naive.
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Next thing you know, you're actually going to ask for them to read the legislation before they're allowed to debate it, let alone vote on it.
I think you'll have an easier time trying to get an independent or third party candidate elected.
But in regards to what you
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the Vonage situation. This company is being sued by all the large incumbents. The established companies have a stake in keeping patents strong, since they are able to use this legal system to shut down competition. Having to occasionally pay some other company for a patent they neglected to get first is just "the cost of doing business."
I, too, wish that companies would lobby for a sane patent system. But, the problem is that even if big companies lose some money to frivolous patents, they are still sufficiently in control of the system that they win even more money from their own frivolous patents. Waiting for big business to save us from this mess is a mistake.
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Reminds me of:
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No, they'll just become scumbag IP holding companies themselves. And lobby congress to get the patent laws changed. To favor them.
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Sounds plausible, til you think it through.
A megacorp pushing through legislation to eliminate patent troll lawsuits would possibly also step on said megacorp's ability to sue its competitors down to the point where they can be snapped up dirt cheap, looted, & the remains dumped into the sewer. I don't see any megacorp pushing for that becaus
No, their "reforms" are to further pervert it. (Score:2)
Under such a system any large software house would be able to simply gather up the related breakthroughs small time and freeware developers created, patent them, then sue them out of existence.
No, what is needed is a more conservative reformation which does not involve input fro
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First-to-invent would let big companies sit on their inventions until someone else bother to file. And companies are far better at establishing invention dates than small inventors.
eliminate the last defense of OSS and small-time developers known as "prior art".
OSS developers d
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What I want most is a reduction in patent term. It should be proportional to the speed that a particular industry moves, and should be reevaluated every five years on a per-industry basis by the USPTO. For miscellaneous inventions, 18 years is fine. For nascent fields like biotech and rapidly evolving fields like computer science, it should be more on the order of three years. The reason is that in computers, by the time something is more than about three years old, it is largely irrelevant, with except
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So basically, a lot like a grant. I'm not really sure that's a complete win, though it should certainly be an affirmative defense in litigation if it can be shown that there was no intention to bring it to market. Thing is, these guys actually could be shown to have been working on bringing their technology to market, but
Could you be a little more vague? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm hesitant to ask if this vaguery was something the article introduced (due to lack of info) or if this is another case of "we won't tell you what you're infringing, but trust us that you are".
You have to love it... (Score:3, Insightful)
How much more of this do we haveto have before everyone in big business realizes that it's all a bad idea?
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At the risk of sounding repetitive the US really needs to sort out this patent-licensing as a business model thing. The license holders have nothing to add to the marketplace and so their not interested in cross licenses. They just want the money now, which stifles invention and progress. I took a look at their site and their mission statement makes interesting reading
License holders are a good thing ... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing inherently wrong with license holders. They provide one valid method for an investor to cash out on the invention. The fact that the system is currently abused does not mean we should throw it out. Should we get rid of email because there is spam? A firm that specializes in license holding for a particular technology or industry can be a useful "marketplace" for companies seeking to license innovations. Here is one example of a good license holder, the University of California. The University holds numerous patents with no intention to do anything more than license the invention. The licensing fees vary depending on the organization, small local firms are treated more favorably than international conglomerates, firms that employ or support faculty or students are treated more favorably, venture capitalists find the University's published list of available licenses a good source of ideas for new firms. University representatives that I have spoken with have mentioned that they know numerous serial entrepreneurs who come to them to find an interesting patent, develop a company, sell it, and return to repeat the cycle. Also, IIRC, the University gets 50% of the licensing fees, the faculty/student inventor gets around 30%, and his/her department gets the remainder.
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Patent trolls throw a wrench in this system because they don't build or sell anything. You can't counter-sue. I'll give it a few years before
Patents are good for small business ... (Score:2)
Patents are probably more important to small business than to big business. Without patents an inventor or small company has no protection from imitators. Without patents a small company can come up with the next great thing and a multinational conglomerate can merely copy it, manufacture at a cheaper price due to economies of scale, reach a lar
Actually (Score:4, Informative)
Missing the point of patents (Score:5, Insightful)
How can a company claim damages if they haven't done the above? Patents are what they are, but it strikes me as just silly - you might be in violation of the patent, but how can you, as the patent holder, claim damages without any proof that loss has occurred?
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The basic idea behind a patent is to allow the patent holder "shelter time" to develop, market, sell, and profit from their new inventions.
The problem, of course, is that the current patent system doesn't make clear that the intention of granting a patent is to allow the technology to be developed.
Nowadays, getting a patent solely to prevent your competition from developing it is considered a valid reason (even though it is the exact opposite of what was intended with the system). In fact, companies get patents for all kinds of reasons (to stifle competition, as part of a defensive war chest, to cover every contingency for future products,
Re:Missing the point of patents (Score:4, Interesting)
Incorrect. The purpose of patents is to encourage inventors to publish their ideas. That can help spur additional development, but it also ensures that technology is not lost if the inventor goes out of business or buys a farm.
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The "damages" aspect likely comes from being squeezed out of the high end market or something.
WiLAN wasn't born a patent troll, but has definitely become one.
Soko
Re:Missing the point of patents (Score:4, Insightful)
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Patent allows inventor to license, not just build (Score:3, Insightful)
It is an error to think that the patent owner has to build something. When the patent system was established it was understood that some farmer or garage mechanic may make the big intellectual break through and not have the money to manufacture the gizmo. The "shelter time" was not only to develop, market, sell, and profit. It was also intended to allow investors to
Re:Patent allows inventor to license, not just bui (Score:2)
This is the basis behind some of the so-called protections in patent law, including prior art, and the idea that if something
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If the patent holding company is late to the market, the product they could make will be severly nutered as the standard moves on and teh upgrades are patented by others. They may claim Wi-Fi Patents, but trying to use it to get into WiMax could be problematic as much of the progress is done by others.
"Having developed the WiMax standard, Intel seems to have stolen a ma
Why now? (Score:5, Interesting)
The onus of protecting rights should be on the holder of the rights.
The strategy of patent holders must not be to "lay dormant" allowing numerous companies to infringe for a decade, and then when the market reaches critical mass, appear from the shadows with lawsuits.
We've all seen this happen before of course, but in other areas of intellectual property, (Trademarks for example) it is the responsibility to prevent the mark from becoming 'commonly used'. Once it does, a trademark holder can lose the rights to the mark. There are many famous examples of this.
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There's some obscure latin phrase that describes that but I was unable to search it out.
You're thinking of "Laches [wikipedia.org]", which is indeed to "sleep on one's rights." It can indeed be used in cases where a party clearly knew of certain actions, but did not bring suit for those actions in a timely manner. Waiting to prosecute in order to trick your competition into committing themselves to using a patent (and thereby extract more money from them in the end) would seem to be illegal.
On the other hand, in this case the company in question apparently sued Cisco, who eventually settled. So they can p
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In general I disagree; I don't think it's fair that a company or person should lose a patent simply because they don't know that someone else is infringing on it, or for whatever reason is unable to take action.
For something like this, though, I agree wholeheartedly. There's no way they didn't realise that people were making and selling wi-fi devices; it's simply not possible.
Just don't ask me where to draw the line between "Fair enough, yo
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Usually, that sort of consistency is a great advantage.
Patent Farmer.. (Score:2, Funny)
You're damned right they are boy! I bought them from some very smart people!
Pa, why don't we license them out then?
Because boy, its easier to just hold them in waiting until we think we can rob enough companies! If we license, we have to manage it! If we just sue, its a one time deal..
Pa...
Why are you the anti-christ?
Laches . . . (Score:2)
easy first step to reform, ban "Forum Shopping" (Score:5, Insightful)
Multiple courthouses/justices are fine, even keep the status quo with their method of appointment, but the cases (primary and appeals) filed should be randomly assigned to a given judge's court.
Removing the ability of troll companies to shop for particularly corrupt or incompetent forums should help reign in part of the problem and bring some regularity or balance to the overall system.
Centralized (Score:2)
Rather Telling (Score:2)
They have a link to "Litigation" [wi-lan.com] dead center in their page top nav bar. It's good to know they take it seriously
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I wonder.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wiki sez in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art [wikipedia.org]:
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Patent numbers? (Score:2, Informative)
Brian
Why retailers (Score:3, Interesting)
Best Buy?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
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How could a store ever be sure that all the electronic components in, say, the computers it sells are dispute-free?
They cannot, and hopefully that concept will be used by Best Buy and all the other defendants to obtain a summary judgment against these patent trolls. I mean come on, on Wi-LAN's own website they say up front and in your face "Our experienced management team is implementing a two-pronged strategy: to sign licenses with every company who uses our patented technology and to acquire new, valuable patents to further strengthen our portfolio." (emphasis mine). How much more blatantly trollish can you get?
Recipe for blackmail (Score:2)
Further more, if a company came under scrutiny, retailers everywhere would immediately stop buying and selling the disputed equipment. Even without a court injunction, that product would cease to make money.
This could be another case where the mere threat of an accusation could spell doom to a business.
(ps, I don't think stores have any expectation to be in the middle of an ip disagreement. I only argue that it would be unjust if they were.)
Wi-LAW (Score:2)
Translation:
Bow down before the one you serve, you're gonna get what you deserve.
List of Patents (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.wi-lan.com/patents/patents-issued.aspx [wi-lan.com]
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According to the article, one of the parties they are suing are D-Link. Wi-LANs litigation page [wi-lan.com] refers to the case as "Wi-LAN Inc. v. D-LINK et al action".
I may be wrong here, but the the image [wi-lan.com] on Wi-LANs patents page [wi-lan.com] looks to me like a D-Link ADSL unit [dsl-warehouse.co.uk]. ...
Isn't that kind of rubbing it in
Marshal, TX (Score:2)
I'm surprised that the RIAA hasn't yet found a way to sue all their file sharers in that backwater dump!
Blame Canada! :) (Score:3, Funny)
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Nah, we'll just do what we always do when we want to screw with an American: offer the invading troops some beer, then innocently caution them to 'go easy, eh, our beer's stronger than what you're used to.'
Never fails.
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Lemmings (Score:3, Interesting)
So I ask you, Slashdotter, imagine this situation. You invent an incremental technological breakthrough, and you patent it. Let's say it involves some esoteric use of carbon nanotubes. Unfortunately, at the moment nobody is manufacturing nanotubes in the quality or consistency that you would need. Basically you have to wait for other tech to mature before your invention can take off.
A few years pass and finally, nanotech is up to the level where your invention could be profitable. You start to ask around to see if other companies are interested in licensing your patent. No takers. Another year passes, and to your shock, products from major companies start to appear on the market that utilize your exact invention. Again you try to work out a license and they all laugh in your face. "Go ahead, try to take us to court. We'll bury you," some legal intern snickers after one heated telephone exchange. Finally, one "patent holding" company offers to buy your invention. Not for much, but for much more than you would otherwise get for it, namely, zero.
Now who's the bad guy in the above scenario? The poor inventor, who couldn't afford to invent all of the other enabling technologies to produce his patent on his own? The patent holding company, who is building up a portfolio from other frustrated inventors? Or the big corporations, who think they're immune from having to pay for intellectual property they expropriate? Or maybe you really think all patents are bad, and if you invent something, your only option is to either give it away for nothing or to try to keep it a trade secret?
My point is: don't be so quick to slavishly kiss up to the corporate overlords and put down every instance of patent litigation. The big corps must be loving the fact that the supposedly free-thinking tech-savvy intellectuals of the world are all lined up in their corner.
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corporates generally prefer patents when it is to their advantage. When it makes them spend money, they call it trolling.
In this case, the inventor should not sell rights completely. Instead he shd license it to the patent troll so that when the big money starts rolling in, atleast he would be compensated.
I vote for a new Slashdot category (Score:2)
This way I can disable it from ever appearing on my front page.
What's the point of all these articles? How many times can we discuss the annoyance of frivolous lawsuits or spend time looking for prior art? It's the same discussion over and over and over and over.
Wi-LAN sucks. Patent trolls should burn in a fiery pit of evil monkeys. US courts encourage this stuff. Kill all the lawyers.
There, you can stop reading this thread now.
Eye for an Eye (Score:2, Insightful)
There should be patent free open standards like IP that everyone can use and build on. What if google had to pay a fraction of a cent for every IP packet as royalty. Would it have taken off in it's infancy. Hell, would internet taken
It's getting ridiculous (Score:2)
If it's ever been obvious that we need patent reform before, it should be painfully obvious now.
I'll say it again, patents should be eliminated (Score:3, Insightful)
I am an inventor, it is too expensive for me to patent my ideas, thus the only patents that I have, have been created during employment. Most all of the people doing the "inventing" on their own find it difficult or impossible to patent.
large corporations and well funded universities spend millions of dollars a year patenting trivial or even not-so-trivial techniques. ("Not so trivial" is still not "non-obvious")
Patents only protect big business from small business, and make competition difficult.
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