Australian government science body the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said yesterday it had won a multi-million dollar legal settlement in the US to license its patented technology that underpins the Wi-Fi platform worldwide.
Scientists from the agency invented the wireless local area network (WLAN) technology that is the basis of the Wi-Fi signal employed by computers, smartphones and other Internet-ready devices around the world.
The organization patented the technology in the 1990s and has been suing companies using it without a license since 2005.
In 2009, CSIRO recouped A$205 million (US$212 million) after settling cases against 14 companies. The organization said it had now been awarded a further A$220 million after reaching agreements with 23 more firms.
Australian Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Chris Evans said in a statement that it was an important battle to win.
“It was important that Australia protect its intellectual property and that those major companies who are selling billions of devices pay for the technology that they were using,” he said.
CSIRO senior executive Nigel Poole said the organization was delighted with the result.
“CSIRO’s commercial and legal teams on both sides of the Pacific have worked very hard over the past several years to gain a reasonable return and I would like to pay particular tribute to them for their extraordinary efforts,” he said.
The invention came out of pioneering work undertaken by the organization in radioastronomy, with a team of its scientists cracking the problem of radio waves bouncing off surfaces indoors, causing an echo that distorts the signal.
They overcame it by building a fast chip with the ability to transmit a signal while reducing the echo, beating many of the major communications companies around the world that were trying to solve the same issue.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained