 Zune could have patent infringement problems. A company in Australia claims to have a valid patent for WiFi's protocols 802.11a and 802.11g. This should not have any implications in the near future but if courts accept it, it could have medium term consequences...
A federal judge in Tyler, Texas, ruled last week that an Australian government agency holds the rights to patents on the underlying technology used in two Wi-Fi standards and a third proposed standard. Judge Leonard Davis ruled that a patent granted in 1996 to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) , Australia's national science agency, is valid. The court also ruled that Buffalo Technology, a small maker of Wi-Fi routing gear, had violated this patent. The judge in the case issued a summary judgment, which indicates the court is wholly convinced by the evidence, to the point where there are no questions of fact. In general, a summary judgment is rare in patent disputes. The ruling is certainly a blow for Austin, Texas-based Buffalo Technology, which--unless it wins an appeal--could be forced to pay between $1.5 million and $2 million in damages to CSIRO. But the decision, which essentially upholds the notion that CSIRO owns the rights to widely used standards-based technology, could have a huge impact on the entire Wi-Fi industry, particularly as companies start embedding Wi-Fi chipsets into consumer electronics devices like music players and mobile handsets. CSIRO claims that its patent covers a core method for transmitting wireless signals that use orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation, which breaks signals into different parts to transmit data simultaneously over different frequencies to maximize performance. IEEE standards including 802.11a, 802.11g and the proposed standard called 802.11n - which is expected to be ratified in 2007 - all use OFDM to transmit data wirelessly. CSIRO filed for its patent in 1992. The patent, No. 5,487,069 , was granted by the U.S. Patent Office in 1996. Furniss said CSIRO disclosed the patent to the IEEE in 1997 when the standards body was developing a faster Wi-Fi standard, which in 1997 became known as 802.11a. The IEEE extended the technology again and, in 2003, ratified the 802.11g standard, which was based on the same fundamental principals as the 802.11a standard. If this patents proves valid, do you know any brown portable video players with WiFi that could have a problem ? [via ZDnet ]
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