The article doesn't give any indication of why these companies believe the CSIRO doesn't deserve the patent.

But elsewhere in the Inquirer was a reference to this, much more insidious, patent which Microsoft has just had awarded.

Can someone who knows a bit about patent law point out whether there's prior art in the idea of turning email addresses into objects, and whether that prior art is not, at least, in OS X Mail.app?

they wont win the suit to break the patent, all they are trying to do is tie up the process in court, if they can do that, they can quit paying patents till a judge rules on the outcome. if that takes 5 years, they can save 5 years of royalties if they win, or else just backpay if they lose. welcome to business.

yup. 2 questions:

1. what exactly did CSIRO make and patent?
2. how much are they getting a year from these big companies?

The CSIRO do some darn good work in australia and have invented several life saving ani-venoms and oterh vaccines , along with the gene-shear technology. They get nowhere near the government funding they should so the money they make from there patents help fund more research. Leave them the hell alone you greedy buggers.

Corporate giants a attempting to weasle out of paying thier dues to the patent holders is nothing new... I hope that when this case is settled and the big corps are ordered to pay and that a reverse writ is issued for damages and the CSIRO can get their defence costs returned and damages are levied against the spurious cry-baby claims of the giant companies involved. I will be avoiding where possible the products of the companies involved and will be promoting such action amongst my IT purchasing peers.

Why does a Gov't entity need to make money? Even in Australia? These patents should be given to the public domain for all to benefit. After all Gov't is supposed to be by the people for the people.

Seems that the big companies want to increase their profit margin by not paying CSIRO what they are entitled to. Threaten CSIRO with lots of lawyers and hope they fold... increasing profits for those big companies (Dell, HP, Micrsoft...) with big legal departments.

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Guest wrote:
Why does a Gov't entity need to make money? Even in Australia? These patents should be given to the public domain for all to benefit. After all Gov't is supposed to be by the people for the people.

Quote

Anonymous wrote:
Corporate giants a attempting to weasle out of paying thier dues to the patent holders is nothing new... I hope that when this case is settled and the big corps are ordered to pay and that a reverse writ is issued for damages and the CSIRO can get their defence costs returned and damages are levied against the spurious cry-baby claims of the giant companies involved. I will be avoiding where possible the products of the companies involved and will be promoting such action amongst my IT purchasing peers.

I must admit, it does seem like a 'big bully' situation where the top players in the IT business world hassle a little entity.
Imagine, if you will, the CSIRO being the US Department of Defence in the fact that the US department of defence(DOD) develop new technologies.
Note that instead of having ideas of blowing people up, the CSIRO are doing things for the wellbeing of mankind.

Now imagine that Microsoft wanted to 'invalidate' a patent that was made by the DOD, knowing full well that it (microsoft) had used ideas in that patent to produce a product (and a crapload of money at that)

Now imagine that the product sells for say... $79.95, and the DOD, instead of saying 'stop doing it' says, well, you can use it, thanks for not bothering to ask us, all we ask for is 50 cents per item sold.

Please note, the above figures are not exact, however i believe it was somewhere in the realms of a dollar per infringement. (cant remember where i read it though).

Plus, factor in, that if they DO pay for use of the intelectual property (IP), the money is going back in towards development of revolutionary medical advances, and new technology solutions that will benefit then in the end!

So in effect, they are shooting themselves in the foot in the long term, and also (indirectly) affecting lots of other people too.

So. On that note, I say GO CSIRO!

The CSIRO, has you have just requested, is going:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/11/15/1163266614119.html

There's a long way to go, but it would appear that wlan manufacturers will be required to pay it royalties. That will include Apple. Apple will not like it. But sauce for the goose, and all that.