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Written by Start a WISP Site Admin
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Thursday, 03 February 2005 |
"Ya'll
might find this interesting...
An un-named company threatened to sue me while I was on Christmas
vacation.
Here is a link to the document I received in my email in-box from the
law firm (revised to keep the parties anonymous):
http://www.pelican-bay.org/lawsuite.htm
Of course they make us out to be the bad guys.
Our story is a bit different though.
Seems to me like their claims are a little flawed."
Dorian:
Bully tactics. As long as you are not solely using your AP for malicious intent, nothing they can do.
Dumb a*s lawyer...
What entertainment I would have had with this!!!!!
wifi freak:
This is kinda funny, does this mean that anyone who gets a cordless
phone or access point after I have been running for 3 months that I can
sue them? I will be filthy rich
korym:
And they should realize that one of the caveats of operating in an
unlicensed frequency is that interference may be an issue and that
nothing, legally, can be done about it. Heck, there's a warning on
every gear that falls under the Part 15 that states the unit must
accept interference.
Gotta love it.
IntraLink (original submitter):
Our side of the story in short:
We have been broadcasting in the
area on all channels at one time or another in the unlicensed 5Ghz
bands for over a year before they showed up. The relations with them
were good, until they outgrew the spectrum. We played nice and spent
thousands on upgrades and a GPS system. During the time we had a Canopy
AP in for upgrade to a cyclone they silently deployed/upgraded two more
AP's and another backhaul.
When we re-deployed they had some
problems. We had already spent a lot of money to play nice with the
spectrum for their sake. We even put our AP on the channel they told us
to while testing their configuration. Then they threatened to go to the
FCC and/or sue us. And get this, one of THEIR customers called us
threatening to sue us or damage our equipment if WE didn't fix things!
So
we left everything the way they advised us to and stopped
communications. That's when we got the email (which was from a real law
firm BTW). I've been a ham for over 15 years, so the biggest tip-off
that made me disregard the whole thing was them twisting an unrelated
section of Part 15 to their case (see link in previous post).
What happened? Due to a conflict of interest their law firm dropped the case.
I've since emailed the other company, but no response.
There are more details of course, but that is the gist of it.
jsparrot:
I know it sucks and hindsight is always 20/20, but I'll bet if you had
blown them off from the get go and not cooperated, they would have less
of a leg to stand on. Now they'll use the fact that everything worked
as they built out until you broke their network (on purpose of
course...)
I've found that greedy corporate types grab, grab,
grab and when they cannot grab anymore threaten lawsuits (notice the
SBA (or is the the BSA?)). Usually if they (the greedies) cannot get a
leg in the door they find someone else who'll cave in. I used to
believe that it was best to be nice in the business world, since that
really is what our country is all about. Too bad a few of those
(greedy) types force the rest of us to be @55holes.
Sorry to hear of your troubles....
Seaboogers:
Screw 'em.....that's why it's called "UNLICENSED". Sure there is the
unwritten "code" called first come first served....but the FCC would
laugh at those jokers.
Too bad so sad....they didn't want to pony up and go the licensed route...then phooey on them is what I say.
The lawyer is obviously CLUELESS about wireless....looks like they just wanted to try and bully you into submission.
cmaenginsb:
The one thing to watch out for is the "intentional interference causing
lost revenue." If they have a good case to prove that you are
interfering with them intentionally, are not willing to work to solve
the solution and they are actually losing money by your interference
they can bring a civil case against you. Since it's a civil case you're
now bringing laymen into make decisions as opposed to the FCC. They're
not claiming that you're breaking the law but that you are causing them
damages.
I know that Metricom tried this in the past (you did
know that the Richochet network was 2.4 Ghz and 900 Mhz right) and it
worked on the smaller guys, basically it scared them into shutting
down. It sounds like that was what they were trying in this case as
well.
Original thread location
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