China takes on Intel

THE vainglorious People's Republic of China is taking chipmaker Intel to the International Standards Organization (ISO) for imposing a near-monopoly on encryption standards for wireless local area network gear.

According to the Xinhua news agency, Beijing said that Chipzilla had used unethical behaviour and wants the ISO to look into it.

China says that the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), broke ISO rules when its national bodies voted on new technology to mend security loopholes in the WLAN standard. It claims that the IEEE didn't follow ethical and procedural rules and principles.

China had been trying to force every man plus dog to adopt its proprietary and secret encryption standard called WAPI. However it was forced to abandon the plan when Intel refused to sell its products behind the bamboo curtain. Intel said that if it adopted the standard it would have to hand over IP rights to Chinese companies.

In March both the IEEE and China asked the ISO to approve a standard for Wireless. The ISO rejected China's WAPI standard, but Beijing claims that was only because the IEEE misled many national bodies that voted on the plan.

More here. µ