Slashdot Mirror
Nigerian Company Sues OLPC
d0ida writes on the continuing troubles at the OLPC Association. Adding to the recent difficulties — the BBC has picked up the litany — a US-based, Nigerian-owned company has now filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against OLPC. Lagos Analysis Corp. claims that OLPC "made unauthorized use of LANCOR's multilingual keyboard technology invention in XO laptops." The suit was filed in Lagos.
... could just ignore Nigerian law and be just fine. After all, it's not like many Nigerians obey anyone else's laws (much less their own).
As pointed out in a later post, the OLPC project in Nigeria is basically charity.
If they continue having problems like this, simply don't send any to them. Let LANCOR explain to the Nigerian government and people how their greed and abuse of patent law is screwing up the education of Nigeria's children and putting them at a serious disadvantage to the country's neighbors.
They might actually have a point. It's not like they've sat on this for years - the public release of OLPC laptops is so recent that it's entirely conceivable that it's taken this long to examine them, document any violations, and file suit. And who knows what behind-the-scene negotiations, which may have delayed filing, have taken place between them and OLPC?
Is it just that the OLPC, being "free" and "open" and using Linux and all, are considered by
Sorry, not picking on you specifically - you're just the first in thread to mention the words "patent troll".
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
From TFA: "LANCOR's technology named Shift2 keyboard technology has been used to create a new class of region specific based keyboards called KONYIN Multilingual Keyboards, which are currently on sale globally." I don't think you can be sure to call this one a patent troll. They are actually producing a product, not just holding a patent for the sole purpose of the suit.
Any comment mentioning moderation is automatically Offtopic.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Or are people suggesting that all patent owners are patent trolls? (A position with which I would largely agree, BTW.)
Not all patent owners are patent trolls. Only those that use their patents to sue people and get in the way of progress and innovation.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
It's about using two extra shift keys for the non-ASCII characters. On his keyboard, he calls them "Shift2" and "Ng". This is a nice way to do languages that use the latin alphabet with a few abnormal extra characters.
...
...
...
It's not like
It's not like
It's not like...
It's not like
But it *is* like CTRL and ALT, except that they're just for generating characters rather than calling arbitrary functions.
(Btw, anyone who refers to a new interface for accessing more characters from the same keys as "technology" is an idiot.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
They might actually have a point
They might in principle, but in practice, they don't. The OLPC keyboard differs from theirs, and there are decades of prior art in using multiple shift keys to reach multiple languages on one keyboard. Their keyboard is basically the "US International Keyboard" for Windows with the keys rearranged.
Yeah, that's the retarded world view where "innovation" means "work around a patent". In the real world, "innovation" means "build on the work of others" and patents are what you use to stop people doing that.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's a nonprofit organization. This company is literally robbing children, quite likely children from their own country. Maybe they're not patent trolls, but they're clearly assholes.