802.11 technology has its origins in a 1985 ruling by the US Federal Communications Commission that released the ISM band for unlicensed use. In 1991, NCR Corporation with AT&T Corporation invented the precursor to 802.11 intended for use in cashier systems. The first wireless products were under the name WaveLAN.
The 802.11 standard uses a large number of patents held by many different organizations.
Some have dubbed Dutch engineer Vic Hayes the "father of Wi-Fi" due to his involvement in negotiating the initial standards within the IEEE while chairing the workgroup.
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The Australian radio-astronomer John O'Sullivan developed a key patent used in Wi-Fi as a by-product in a CSIRO research project, "a failed experiment to detect exploding mini black holes the size of an atomic particle". In 1992 and 1996, Australian organization CSIRO (the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) obtained patents[8] for a method later used in Wi-Fi to "unsmear" the signal.
In 1999, the Wi-Fi Alliance formed as a trade association to hold the Wi-Fi trademark under which most products are sold.
In April 2009, 14 technology companies agreed to pay CSIRO $250 million for infringements on CSIRO patents.[11] This led to Australians labelling Wi-Fi as an Australian invention,though this has been the subject of some controversy. CSIRO won a further $220 million settlement for Wi-Fi patent-infringements in 2012 with global firms in the United States required to pay the CSIRO licensing rights estimated to be worth an additional $1 billion in royalties.