CSIRO on the U.S Stage – Patenting Wireless Technology

Australia’s leading scientific organization, CSIRO, has received a somewhat promising result in relation to an appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Federal Circuit provides the U.S. Circuit system with an appellate court to hear, primarily, patent matters. The decision is of significant import to CSIRO, as it has been said that its technology pioneered one of the initial patents in the wireless technology industry.

While affirming the lower court’s novelty finding in favour of CSIRO, the Federal Circuit did, however, remand the obviousness finding. The order was predicated on the basis that the lower court heard the action pre-KSR, which criticized the rigid application of the TSM test for obviousness regarding prior art references. In relation to obviousness, the Federal Circuit held:

“In sum, we conclude that the evidence offered by Buffalo created a genuine issue of material fact as to whether there was a motivation to combine prior art references dealing with the multipath problem and whether the combination of those prior art references disclosed all of the limitations of the independent claims of the ’069 patent. We therefore vacate the district court’s summary judgment of nonobviousness and remand for further proceedings on that issue.”

The following link provides access to the decision: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/07-1449.pdf
In light of the above, the lower courts finding on obviousness will be much anticipated…