HP, Fujitsu, Microsoft Settle with CSIRO on WiFi (802.11) Patent. (April 14, 2009)

The litigation begun by CSIRO several years ago is based on US patent number 5,487,069 Wireless LAN which was filed on November 23 1993 and issued on January 23 1996.

According to Stuart Corner writing in IT-Wire  the patent was assigned to CSIRO by the five Australians, named in the patent: John O'Sullivan, Graham Daniels, Terry Percival, Diethelm Ostry and John Deane. Its origins reside in research undertaken at Macquarie University with CSIRO funding and involving both CSIRO and Macquarie University staff. It was commercialised by Radiata, with the company later sold to Cisco Systems. Subsequently Cisco Systems abandoned all work on WiFi chipsets.

Last month HP reached an out-of-court settlement with CSIRO and yesterday US legal newsletter, Law360, reported that Judge Leonard Davis of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has dismissed with prejudice, i.e. dismissed with good reason the claims and counterclaims between CSIRO and Fujitsu, thereby barring either of them from bringing an action on the same claim.

The terms of the settlement are confidential, but it is understood that each party had agreed to bear their own costs incurred in more than two years of litigation.

Also today Bloomberg has reported that Microsoft has settled with CSIRO over the matter of patent infringement. The terms of the settlement haven't been disclosed.

Other claims and counterclaims are still before the court, involving Intel Corp., 3Com Corp., Dell Inc., Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Accton Technology Corp. and Nintendo of America Inc., ASUS Computer, D-Link, Belkin and SMC Networks.

Mr Corner in describing the case writes the following:

The patent's role in 802.11a was closely examined, and its importance questioned, in a case study on Radiata prepared for [Australia's] then Department of Education, Science and Training in November 2003.

Its authors noted that "Opinion differs on the ways in which the existence of CSIRO's wireless LAN patent influenced the subsequently agreed 802.11a standard." They quoted a recollection by Radiata co-founder David Skellern on the evolution of the 802.11a standard, and say that, if his recollection is correct, "CSIRO's wireless LAN patent did influence the new standard, but in the diffuse and hard to trace manner that is a characteristic of public good research...It is worth noting that other well-informed individuals support the view that there is only an indirect connection between CSIRO's wireless LAN patent and the subsequent 802.11a standard."

They concluded that: "In this view, the patent is based on finding a non-trivial practical solution to wireless LANs based upon parameters set by the laws of physics over radio-wave propagation in this frequency range. Similarly, IEEE 802.11a is also based upon these immutable physical laws. Consequently, the design of IEEE 802.11a is likely to have ended up as it did without CSIRO's patent simply because this is a logical solution."

In short the overall outcome still remains far from clear.