Get All Yer WiFi Patents In One Bundle
One of the problems with today’s patent system is that with any technology, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be dealing with over a dozen different patent claims – some of which will clearly be ridiculous. It’s no different with WiFi, but now some are concerned that patent issues might be slowing down WiFi. It’s funny, of course, that the whole point of patent law is to encourage innovation, and most of the talk these days is about just how much it’s slowing down innovation – but that’s a different story. In the meantime, there’s an effort underway to bundle up all the various WiFi patents and set up a joint licensing program that would basically solve all the issues. The difficulty, of course, is that everyone likes to think their own patents are worth a lot more than anyone else’s, and aren’t interested in a trade of their valuable patent for someone else’s worthless patent. All it really is, is a bunch of squabbling about how to divide up some pool of money, rather than focusing on ways to actually improve the technology.
