ShareWave offers royalty-free license for 802.11e-related patents

ShareWave offers royalty-free license for 802.11e-related patents
By Patrick Mannion, EE Times
March 2, 2001 (2:07 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010302S0061

DALLAS — ShareWave Inc. announced this week that it will offer royalty-free licenses for ShareWave patents necessary for the implementation of IEEE 802.11e, pending ratification of that draft specification.

The IEEE Task Group E is developing the 802.11e spec as an extension to 802.11b that will provide missing quality-of-service and security provisions. The QoS extensions are essential if voice-over-IP (VoIP) connectivity is ever to be achieved over an 802.11b network.

ShareWave (El Dorado Hills, Calif.) is working with AT&T, Lucent and others to develop the extensions and security features of the spec. The IEEE will vote this month to narrow down the various proposals to one. AT&T has already released its patents on a royalty-free basis. Lucent has no patents that impinge on the proposal.

The missing features of 802.11b have been key sticking points with that spec, and their absence has provided the HomeRF Working Group a leg up i n its effort to drive its standard into the home and small-office arena ahead of 802.11b.

ShareWave's contributions to the 802.11e proposal are a subset of features extracted from its patented Whitecap networking protocol.