The Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) is suing three of the largest U.S. mobile operators, charging they infringed a patent by selling wireless LAN products.
CSIRO last year settled with 14 wireless LAN vendors, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, after suing them in 2005 over the same copyright. The current lawsuits, filed in late February in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Texas, target AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA.
CSIRO is a government-funded research institute with facilities all over Australia. It claims tenure of U.S. Patent No. 5,487,069, issued in 1996, entitled "Wireless LAN," which it claims covers fundamental aspects of the IEEE 802.11a,b,g and n standards. In the three lawsuits filed in February, CSIRO is going after companies that are mainly sellers rather than makers of Wi-Fi products.
In three separate complaints, CSIRO alleges each mobile operator is deliberately infringing the patent because it informed them about the infringement last year. The agency is seeking vague damages as well as injunctions to stop the carriers from selling infringing products. CSIRO wants a jury to hear the case. One exemption to the complaints is that the allegedly infringing products don't include those made with Intel chips. Intel was one of the companies that settled with CSIRO last year.
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