Law News re 802.11a/802.11g WiFi Products

I haven't seen this news mentioned here, and it might be interesting to
users of WiFi equipment.

Yesterday, June 26, 2007, the U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas,
issued an injunction against Buffalo Technologies preventing Buffalo's
sales of its 802.11a and 802.11g wireless networking products. The
injunction goes into effect 45 days from yesterday, so sales of Buffalo
products won't immediately be impacted. Also, Buffalo has said that it
plans to appeal the decision, and likely will ask the appellate court to
stay the injunction pending appeal.

The injunction follows a decision last November that Buffalo's products
infringed a U.S. Patent owned by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). CSIRO is the principal
scientific research organization of the Australian Federal Government.

CSIRO has asserted the same patent against many other companies in suits
filed in the same District Court, with the notable exception of
CISCO/Linksys. The following is from the Court's June 15, 2007 Opinion
directing that an injunction should issue:

"In 1997, CSIRO and Macquarie University formed Radiata Communications
Pty Ltd., an Australian company, to commercialize the ‘069 patent. CSIRO
licensed the ‘069 patent to Radiata, and in 2001 Cisco Systems, Inc.
acquired Radiata for $295 million in stock and began paying royalties to
CSIRO."

Court decision:
http://www.townsend.com/files/CSIROOrderG.pdf

News articles:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...on&btnG=Search

--
Lem MS MVP -- Networking

To the moon and back with 64 Kbits of RAM and 512 Kbits of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer