CSIRO claims US carriers violate Wi-Fi patent

Australian research firm CSIRO has sued AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Verizon for allegedly violating a patent it holds for Wi-Fi. The US carriers have been accused of infringing by selling phones using the wireless standard. CSIRO's commercialization executive director Nigel Poole wouldn't say exactly why the organization was targeting the providers but implied they were proxies for those actually violating the patent.

"You could speculate that maybe the infringing products from Verizon or T-Mobile or AT&T are RIM's (BlackBerry) or Nokia's or Apple's iPhones, and that maybe a Broadcom or Marvell supply their chip sets," he told The Australian.

The company has a history of targeting as many companies as possible with lawsuits and in April 2009 got an out-of-court settlement with 13 major technology firms, involving more directly involved companies like Intel as well as Dell, HP, Microsoft and Toshiba. Lawsuits are still underway with actual chipset producer Marvell as well as Acer, Lenovo and Sony.

Patent suits rarely complete quickly, and estimates have the complaint against the carriers taking as long as two years should they decide against settlements.

By Electronista Staff

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