Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Texas again according to an article on :Rethink Wireless. The Aussies have slapped AT&T, (T) T-Mobile, and Verizon (VZ), with patent lawsuits. The Australian science agency, emboldened by its settlements over Wi-Fi patents with Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft is now going after U.S. retailers.
According to the article, patent trolling is a lucrative business, for CSIRO. In 2009 CSIRO brought in about $205m in royalties largely because of a massive out-of-court settlement. CSIRO made a deal with 14 vendors including Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Toshiba, and HP (which I wrote about here). According to CSIRO’s annual report, this settlement helped turn its budgeted deficit of $34.2M into a profit of $122M. The CSIRO now claims 161 active patent licensees. Many licensees are connected to the patent issued in 1996, which CSIRO says includes all 802.11 Wi-Fi products.
Wi-Fi patent trolling plan
In the article, Nigel Poole, executive director in charge of commercialization at CSIRO says this is a deliberate plan. “There’s a legal strategy here that has been thought through very carefully and to a layperson, it looks like a pincer movement. You’ve got court action CSIRO says its proceeds from royalties are invested in new research, and presumably, that could lead to new patents and licensing claims.”
Broadcom and Atheros have counter-sued CSIRO on the behalf of the Wi-Fi industry to have the patent declared invalid.
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Seems the Australians have gotten pretty good at patent trolling. Maybe they can build their entire broadband infrastructure on the backs of U.S. consumers. Too bad the U.S. government didn’t think of this first.
This should be a big test for AT&T. AT&T is testing Wi-Fi data offload for smartphone users by creating a giant pilot Wi-Fi hot zone in New York City’s Times Square. The pilot will offer its mobile broadband customers free access. It is widely believed that after the pilot AT&T may deploy more hot zones in other areas across the country.
Many of AT&T’s smartphones support auto-authentication at AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots. The automation makes it seamless for subscribers to connect to its 21,000 hot spots. AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega has indicated in the past that offloading data traffic onto Wi-Fi would play a large role in curbing its overwhelming data growth.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.