The very building I'm sitting in was paid for by Manchester University successfully suing IBM for an infringment of our Virtual Memory patent. Ahhh, those were the days: university administrators with the cajones to take on the big fish.

Depending on jurisdiction, it looks like there might be some case law to back CSIRO's position.

Dunno about CSIRO, but surely Manchester University is funded by public funds -- and therefore, any patents it develops should belong to the taxpayers who funded it (and therefore, available to all to use for taxpayers benefit) instead of being used to exhort money from companies and therefore forcing up the price that the same people have to pay when they buy their products or use their services.

@ Anonymous Coward

Frankly, the Universities are still funded by the public fund but the trend is to reduce this part for some privates funding. Hence, what can be the part which should return to the citizens and the part which should stay in the stakeholders' hands?

Don't search: tables, chairs, bricks and mortars will stay to the public domain while the most valuable part will go to somebody else.

@Maverick: It was pretty cool in the mid 90's when CSIRO made the tech.

Now its pretty ordinary.

@Anonymous Coward: Are you a Australian tax payer? :P

CSIRO is neither a non-competitive nor educational institution. It's one the best scientitifc research and development bodies on the planet. It has multiple research streams - and good hunks of its pure science research depend on fund flows from commercialising some of its applied R&D. The ICT industry NEEDS the pure science! When the ICT industry starts belittling institutuions like CSIRO, they're pooing in their own nest.