Steve Stroh is a highly-recommended stop for anyone interested in wireless technology. He has the sources, the background, and the writing skills to make it come alive.
So I was honored when he chose to respond to my recent piece on Wi-LAN. As usual, he has the facts nailed.
Enjoy.
To be fair, Wi-LAN's OFDM patent predates 802.11a, 802.11g, and 802.16/WiMAX. Wi-LAN was very open (obnoxiously so, at times) about the existence of the patent and that they felt, and planned to enforce, that no one could build 802.11a (and follow-on systems such as 802.11g and 802.16/WiMAX) without running afoul of Wi-LAN's patent.
As a participant in the IEEE standards process, Wi-LAN had to promise to "fairly and impartially" be willing to license the patent to anyone who wants it.
This isn't the first time Wi-LAN has sued Cisco. When Cisco made a Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (WMAN) system, Wi-LAN sued them for this same patent infringement. Cisco ultimately killed that product for reasons unrelated to the Wi-LAN lawsuit (it was an expensive dog of a product). Wi-LAN's is emboldened... or increasingly desperate... into action by their licensing of what they claim are additional key patents for OFDM.
Wi-LAN's purchase of the Lamarr patent was entirely symbolic; what they bought was literally the patent document; having long since expired by the time Wi-LAN bought it, it had worth only as a historical document. The income that Lamarr received from Wi-LAN for the patent was the ONLY income that Lamarr EVER realized from the Lamarr/Antheil patent for Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum.
My take. The use of patents as a business weapon by a company falling of its own weight is what I'm on about. Steve's background knowledge helps document the point.
Patents are a limited right to profit from an invention for a limited time. They are a license to produce. They should not be a license to prevent. The test of a patent's worthiness should include a measure of the holder's own efforts to exploit the patent. And the transferability of patents should be limited. It's a production license, not a legal hunting license.
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