The patent you cite was filed Jan 27, 2000. In general, to challenge a
patent you'd have to find publicly available description (publication),
prior patent, or public offer of the technology for sale pre-dating the
patent's filing date. The patent office has already searched prior patents
and found none prior to Jan 27 2000. If you can, there's some attorney's
that'd very much like to know what you know. But just being familiar with
Mesh for the last-almost-7-years doesn't count. Not knowing that some
technology may be subject to Intellectual Property Right does not make it
free. The most well known case of this is GIF image encoding. This was
used freely on the web, literally for years, before the IPR holder chose to
begin asserting their claim (it was apparently years before the IPR holder
even knew that they actually held IPR!! ... typical big company syndrome
IIRC).
Rich
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Wu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'WISPA General List'" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 9:06 AM
Subject: [WISPA] Old News -- but can someone patent a "mesh network"
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view_press_release.php?rID=9156
Their patent reads as follows
US Patent No 6,249,516 B1
WIRELESS NETWORK GATEAWY AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING SAME
A wireless network system includes a server having a server controller and a
server radio modem, and a number of clients each including a client
controller and a client radio modem. The server controller implements a
server process that includes the receipt and the transmission of data
packets via the radio modem. The client controllers of each of the clients
implements a client process that includes the receipt and transmission of
data packets via the client radio modem. The client process of each of the
clients intiates, selects, and maintains a radio transmission path to the
server that is either a direct path to the server, or is an indirect path or
"link" to the server through at least one of the remainder of the clients.
A method for providing wireless network communication includes providing a
server imeplementing a server process including receiving data packets via a
radio modem, sending data packets via the server radio modem, communicating
with the network, and performing housekeeping functions, and further
includes providing a number of clients, each implementing a client process
sending and receiving data packets via a client radio modem, maintaining a
send/receive data buffer, and selecting a radio transmission path to the
server. The radio transmission path or "link" is either a direct path to
the server, or an indirect path to the server through at least one of the
remainder of the clients. The process preferably optimizes the link to
minimize the number of "hops" to the server.
I'm not a lawyer, but this seems a bit ridiculous to me...
Thoughts?
-Charles
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