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LANCOR v. OLPC Case Continues In Nigerian Court
drewmoney writes "According to an article on Groklaw: It's begun in a Nigerian court. LANCOR has actually done it. Guess what the Nigerian keyboard makers want from the One Laptop Per Child charitable organization trying to make the world a better place? $20 million dollars in 'damages,' and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria."
get their money from all those secret accounts that I keep getting emailed about.
Please?
Q: How do you pronounce "$20"
A: "Twenty dollars"
Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million"
A: "Twenty million dollars"
Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million dollars"
A: "Twenty million dollars dollars"
You're welcome.
Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists. no wonder thier country is in the state it's in.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Just send them weapons.
Most of the stuff on
When I collect my $25 million from the Honorable Juju Majinki, who is holding these funds in trust, I plan to donate part of those funds to the OLPC defense fund.
Don't do business in Nigeria; ever.
I'm not a big fan of IP, but you don't get special privileges to infringe on it just because you're a NPO trying to "make the world a better place."
The OLPC is a solution in desperate need of a problem. Here's a a problem for Negroponte: IP infringement. Heaven forbid that businesses in the developing world be allowed to develop on their own merits. Much better to force them into a dependency relationship with the West by selling back to them their own stolen innovations.
I guess OLPC didn't pay the kickback moneys in pricing the deal now the corrupt are howling foul. Goes to show us in the free world how well we are off when institutionalized corruption is so rampant.
Or is it the government wanting to keep people dumb and stupid so they don't revolt for a democracy?
Would be interesting to see who bribed who to deprive the children from knowledge. There could be one hell of a story in that.
All they need to do is send them the $30M that a dead relative of mine apparently left behind in a nigerian bank account after being killed in a car crash a year or so ago... I have the contact info for a brother in God who will be happy to help them get at it for a small fee... All they need to do is mail him their bank account info, and a few thousand dollars to cover the administration fees...
It would seem to me that Nigerias biggest problem is fatal car crashes as I see this deal about 6 times a day...
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
It's easy to forget that most of Africa's problems stem from the fact that the culture places very little value on human life.
You know all those "relief funds" that go to poor/starving/fucked African countries? Yeah, most of those funds end up in the hands of the corrupt government leaders and/or military, who are MORE than happy to let everybody starve if it means more cash for them.
The problems with Africa can't be solved with donations. They can only be solved with armed revolutions. Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things.
If you do read the article, it's a complicated case (as legal cases always are), that essentially boils down to this: Nigeria's officials, including their judges and politicians, are still perceived as being hopelessly corrupt, and by all appearances this is nothing more than attempted legal extortion. The legal claims by which the lawsuit is proceeding is on shaky ground at best. Even if the claims are legitimate, it still is a sad day, when an organization like this is sued by the very people it's most likely to benefit.
Maybe they aren't ready for a mass introduction of technology - they certainly have shown a compunction for abuse so far. Nigeria is already synonymous with Internet-based moneymaking scams. Does the third world have other, more important priorities instead of laptops, such as basic infrastructure, and a stable and responsive democratic government (most of the world's poorest countries are still ruled by dictators). Complain if you will about the governments of first-world countries such as the US, but if so, you likely haven't seen the corruption of others up close. Visit Mexico for a fine example of what happens when a country with significant potential is rife with corruption from top to bottom. Corruption tends to poison and overshadow even the benefits of democracy and capitalism, as it tends to keep power concentrated in very few hands.
On the other hand, perhaps an opening of information can help to educate the next generation - to give them more options, and more information, more hope. Just as wireless technology is leapfrogging the old, expensive landline-based infrastucture in many countries, perhaps an infusion of technology can help jump-start an economic surge in places that need it most. I just hope they choose to use it wisely.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
It appears that the disputed keyboard layout was only used in the development devices and not in the production devices. By this there should be no injunction on the distribution and likely no/minimal payment for infringement.
From Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071203061340580#c652659
----
If you examine the OLPC Wiki's edit history for the West African (Nigerian) keyboard you can see what Adé Oyegbola is on about. To save you trawling back and forth here it is in a nutshell. Note that where I write "create" I am referring to the Wiki entires - these dates may not correspond to the physical devices.
1. 2006-08-07 OLPC buy KONYIN keyboards
2. 2006-11-13 OLPC create Nigerian layout based on KONYIN layout
3. 2006-11-13 OLPC Nigerian image updated; layout unchanged
4. 2007-03-02 OLPC image updated to show Beta-3 model; layout unchanged (Original Image March 2nd)
5. 2007-08-?? LANCORP sends OLPC Cease & Desist Notice
6. 2007-08-20 OLPC B3 layout revised completely, no longer looks like KONYIN (Revised Image August 20th)
7. 2007-08-21 OLPC replaces B3 with B4 Ng-MP-Alt layout (more dialect symbols) and new image.
So this boils down to prototype XOs that used the KONYIN layout. I'm not sure how many prototypes were made with the Nigerian keyboard (I'd guess not many more than the 300 used at Galadima primary school, Abuja) but the total quantities were B1: 875, B2: 2,500, B3: 100, B4: 2,000, C1: 300 (see Development Schedule.
Since August 2007 with the C1 (pre-production) the West African (Nigerian) layout has been as you see it on the current Wiki page.
So the crux is that LANCORP are upset over those beta prototypes but the production XOs (and all XOs made since August 2007) have not used the KONYIN layout.
--
I was born in Nigeria, and spent the first 7 months of my life there, so sadly I don't have any memories of the place. My mum and dad have regaled me with tales of corruption (everyone from the gardener to the police it seems) and it sounds like a horrible place in which to live and work. I have no desire to go back.
My web domain.
I'm not a lawyer but if they sent them a cease and desist letter, and they stopped infringing then they don't have much of a case. The best they can hope for is to get all the infringing models destroyed.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
From a RIAA lawyers perspective, this is just fine. Add a little immorality (deprived children), do some simple math (300 * $66,666 = $20,000,000) and voila!
Full Tilt
Has anyone actually found a copy of the patent that Lancor are claiming has been infringed? I've searched for about 40 minutes, and can't find it anywhere. Apparently, it's registered as patent number RD8489.
http://xkcd.com/313/
'nuff said.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Programming begins with books, paper, chalk board, etc... NOT a computer.
Q: How do you end a question?
A: With a question mark.
Q: How do you end a statement?
A: With a period.
Q: What do you call a grammar nazi whose mock questions don't end in question marks?
A: Dumb.
It's also very hard to see how this could've damaged them either way, since OLPC doesn't compete AT ALL with their keyboard - you can't exactly buy an OLPC laptop and plug it into your computer to use as a keyboard? Even if you could, it would be stupid to spend $200 on a tiny keyboard instead of $20 on a proper one. It seems pretty ridiculous to claim OLPCs might cannibalise their market, unless you can prove that somebody receiving an OLPC laptop would've bought an entire computer with their keyboard instead.
Actually, OLPCs are more likely to *grow* their market, since more children growing up who know how to use computers are eventually going to buy proper ones, and then will naturally need a Nigerian keyboard to go with that --- so actually, if OLPC used the Nigerian keyboard layout, it would encourage sales of their keyboard even more, since apart from a much larger market, all these new users would also be used to their particular layout and thus not want to change.
I suspect that sales of this keyboard are probably horribly low, so now they want to try another 'business model' (i.e. sue comparatively rich Western organisation to make a quick buck).
Just another example of the poor exploiting the rich.
It always breaks my heart when I see it happening.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Only in America...
Q: How do you pronounce 'Old'
A: Old
Q: How do you pronounce 'Sold'
A: Sold
Q: How do you pronounce 'Older'
A: Older
Q: How do you pronounce 'Solder'
A: Sodda!
We* can only be amused...
* The rest of the world
Admire the beauty of simplicity! Well done!
Also, fuck nigeria and all nigerians!
Well, *I* got the joke.
RANCOR vs OLPC. Two go in, one comes out. you know, like Mad Max, without the accents...
First of all, almost all elements used to build these laptops are belonging to somewhere else.
The components are possibly Chinese. the ideas are possible brewed from open source (a good concept, but a salad in the end, for this very same argument explained in here). Many of the "teaching contents" ain't local (with this, you know, local is "Local" in every place is a different culture-animals-religions-traditions-dictators-martyrs-heroes-ECONOMY).
After all, you start trying to give people a better education, but in the process, transform them in aliens, individuals separated from them own reality, and context (i think their context is being abused, since centuries, and robed, and being utilized, and being the last defecating end of giga-planet monopolies-mafias).
So, what happens if you "create" a "global" child in that medium?? usually chaos (think some of those lands are in chaos at this moment), and the necessity of "global people" to rescue them. (finally you generate a Trojan, more chaos, and local monsters that defend their land from the foreigners (attacks they think)).
So, in the end, OLPC, can do, to its maximum extent, provide a "transparent structure", to which, every land would fill with their history, and what they got in their blood.
BUT, HOW.
how can you override the material from which the laptop is made?, necessary evil some will say?
Most directly, people in the countries DON'T need, (nor needed in the past), computers.
They need peace.
They need the time and space to learn from their elders, to heal, and to cultivate the land. to learn from it, to recall what is which this land produces, and how you should take care of it.
All that, is not in a computer (although you can document it, its not advised), is in their will.
Introducing a big factory, the marked economy, in this lands that CANT TAKE THEM, that dont have that history.
Or SENDING THEM WEAPONS, WONT HELP, them achieve the reconciliation, the healing, or the sustainable growing their own land needs.
Even complaining and cursing, saying they ain't good people to do business with, is NOT WHAT THEY NEED. I mean, that does only harm.
In the end, interventionism, generates a monster.
But.. why is the aggressive reaction occurring in this lands? why is people "hunting" each other there?
Is it because of interventionism and the aliens "global culture" generates? (read: we are all living in america)
Is it because of the big factories emplaced in this poor lands? (poor in currency)
Is this because of the social strait stairs that the big factories/market economy generates to be able to "participate" in this economy?
Is this because of the intervention of mafia/monopoly interfering them to consolidate and consume those lands/people?
is this because they are CONSUMING PRODUCTS THAT ARE NOT FROM THEIR OWN LAND? (which generates another type of alien).
In part, those are stuff negroponte didnt took into account, when tracing his plan.
and are stuff market economy will never think about. If they would think of that, they couldnt destroy and colonize new lands. (read some resentment there).
LANCOR.
Yes, I realize there are over 500 languages being used in Nigeria and their official language is English. I just hope the courts in Nigeria can grind a little faster than the courts in America.
IMO this ploy by LANCOR against OLPC is a carbon copy of the SCO scheme against Linux. I wonder if the company funding LANCOR is the same company that funded the SCO fiasco.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Exactly. And notice how the tired jokes about scammers, or those talking about the backwardness of Nigerians as a whole, are modded up. I think only ignorant people make generalizations about a country or continent, and they often do so because they're plain lazy/supercilious. Corruption is not part of the 'culture of Africa' - as if it's all one culture, how scintillating. I see evidence of incredible stupidity on the parts of, say, certain Americans, but I've never seen that as a reason to abuse America's culture or all Americans. Of course, for Africans, any available stereotypes are okay to use, right?
Everybody else says "solder".
No sig today...
Sounds reasonable in today's post 9/11 world.
What?
Basically, the idea of OLPC is that we'll just flood Africa with a bunch of practically free notebooks using massive economies of scale.
When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing. It's always fun to look at free trade and say, geez, look at what the third world is doing to the USA, but, sometimes, you have to look the other way around.
This is my sig.
goes unpunished.
A colloquialism, whilst not correct in formal speech or writing, is absolutely correct to use when conveying local speech and writing styles.
Colloquial English from Nigeria, as evidenced my a ton of spam, tends to use the "$20 million dollars" format all the time. It's entirely likely that the litigant in question used that phrasing in his demands. Though not used in formal speech, it is nonetheless absolutely appropriate in reporting his cultural tendencies and demands accurately.
Much as we'd love to get the Grammar Nazi S.S. to kill every last one of them, they're busy planning the deaths of the American undermenschen that think "Y'all" is acceptable. Until that campaign is complete, they couldn't possibly attack Nigeria.
Of course in areas near Western Africa, they don't issue One Laptop Per Child, they issue One Gun Per Child:
http://blog.riflegear.com/archive/2007/12/26/hello-kitty-ar-15---evil-black-rifle-meets-cute-and.aspx
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I hate to be the one to state it first, but Nigeria (all of Nigeria) is corrupt. I would be quite cheerful if the OLPC stopped trying to send computers to Nigeria (actually none have yet been sent). But this law suit comes in advance of any actual damage. Its pre-emptive. No problem. ATTENTION WORLD CHARITIES: Nigeria wishes to be a pariah state, looking the gift horse in the mouth, swatting the hand that is trying to help it. Please stop giving any and all aid, donations, social work, charitable work, sending books, supplies, relief, etc. to Nigeria "in advance". There, hopefully boycotts on goods coming from Nigeria and a cessation of aid to Nigeria will help them with their corruption and/or greedy-bastardism problems. Its not mean-spiritedness on my part, merely an opportunity for them to check reality.
It doesn't seem right to ask for money on Lancor's part. But why are they asking for damages to begin with? I would really like to know that before I buy into OLPC's side of the story. listen_to_slashdot
THis IP has been covered here before. The patent is for work that was done 20 years earlier in the states. All in all, this WAS an ip infringement in the original place, but is not even close at this time. The fact that you scream about this, says taht you are most likely just a MS FUDer.
I see a number of posts about how America has screwed with Africa, but the reality is, that EU has been there for several hundred years. America has done relatively little. Sadly, we have backed some dictators, and that has to stop. China is now in there in a big way, and there is ZERO scruples in how they are going at it. Money, guns, and women galores to some of the worst leaders there. In return, they want guarenteed access not only to the minerals, but to dirt cheap labor. That later part is the worst of it. They are looking to pay a fraction of what the open market pays.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You are technically correct, but your point has nothing to do with this LANCOR situation, since their claim is specifically about illegal use of "their" keyboard layout - nowhere does their complaint say anything about being harmed by cheap laptop dumping, nor do they represent any group of people who might have such claim.
Anyway, there is a crucially important difference between this and other forms of dumping which are actually more wrong: This is basically PRIVATE charity, it's not e.g. the US government dumping cheap computers on the 3rd world to subsidise their own industry; rather, it's private individuals using private money.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am not a lawyer either, but it seems that when infringement is willful (ie not by mistake), you may be liable for the damage you've done even if you stop when slapped with a C&D Letter.
Since the facts state that OLPC actually bought one of their keyboards with an implied intention to copy the layout, the infringement, if any, was willful.
I'm sure that the "IP" that's been infringed is something someone imagines to be property when it's nothing more than an idea (and quite possibly a vague one at that).
Well, that is why some of us call it "imaginary property" after all...
... or even an effective way to get them education compared to other methods? Even in the USA, computers in the classroom haven't exactly been a resounding success; other methods of improving education can be more effective.
Seriously, does LANCOR sue all laptop builders that provide their own keyboard on their laptop? Surely the OLPC has some means of attaching an external keyboard just like other laptops? OLPC could even be a new market for them.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I guess that depends on your definition of the "free world." Personally I am troubled by the corruption I see in America, which was once considered a member of that club. In global terms, the integrity of the American government(s) was ranked 20th by the Global Corruption Report. Judging by your nick, you probably are glad to know Canada is indeed ranked less corrupt. I don't know if the level of American corruption qualifies as "rampant," but it is real and does affect its citizens. Look at the chilling effects of the media-purchased DMCA, the Florida recount debacle of 2000, and the wrist-slaps administered to Microsoft in 2001 and to Sony-BMG in 2005. Microsoft smothered Netscape and WordPerfect in front of everyone's eyes, and where is their punishment? Sony-BMG did on a grand scale the same sort of thing that earned federal prison sentences for the wunderkind hackers of the 1980s. But who in Sony-BMG went to prison? Why is Sony-BMG still permitted to conduct business in the USA? They are just going to do it again someday. Not much justice here bro (or sis). Large scale corruption, we gots that aplenty.
Now, I think know what you mean I guess -- I've lived in some of those countries way below 20th place also, and I've seen plenty of the "usual" brand of corruption too. At least I don't get shaken down for bribes, or outright robbed, by the local police here. But, I also pay much, much higher taxes and the police get much, much higher salaries. Frankly I am not sure that there is any substantial difference in the perniciousness of corruption in the USA compared to the developing world.
$META_SIG_JOKE
Holy moly. I just realized I chimed in with a grammatical comment on a post about OLPC and Nigerian "courts.".
http://www.lancorltd.com/contact.htm
Since the OLPC is a scam, and none will really ever end up released... isn't an injunction preventing them from shipping the OLPC to Nigeria kind of useless?
BTW, I'm sure the irony of the OLPC scammers being sued, by a scammer, in Nigeria (!!!) is lost on nobody. If it were any more divorced from reality, it would tear a hole in the space-time continuum.
These Nigerian retards claim it took nine years of work to come up with meta-keys? I've typed on keyboards with two meta keys for typing what'd normally be alt-characters.
I looked at the drawing on the groklaw site of the alleged keyboard and from what I could see, it looked a lot like a plain old IBM PC keyboard. The quality of the drawing was so poor I couldn't tell much beyond that. I realize that I am no where near as compassionate at HHDL but there are lots of countries in the world that could benefit from the OLPC and if the Nigerian Government doesn't want it, I suppose that would be their decision. I think the people at OLPC must have a real sense of humor and will deal with this in an appropriate way. Maybe the display design lady will move to Nigeria and go to work with the keyboard folks...
Allot of Scams comes from there on close source systems, if an open source network like the OLPC program would set foot in the country it would a threat that closed economy! Children are exploited to commit crimes education is also a threat there.
to announce that they've licensed LANCOR's patent for use with the Windows version of the OLPC when it becomes available...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
It's normal business and engineering practice to purchase examples of any relevant equipment on the market (especially competing equipment) while you are engineering your own product. This is how product engineering progresses, with each new generation of equipment improving on what came before. Very frequently it goes far beyond mere visual inspection of products, and into full reverse engineering, which is a fully protected (and respected) activity.
If some aspect of a purchased product is a copyrightable work (but this does NOT extend to ideas, as ideas are not copyrightable works) and was directly copied then it is possible to sue for copyright violation. This rarely applies to anything other than code and documentation though. Maybe layout is copyrightable too, but it's a fringe area and would need to be legally tested.
If some aspect of a purchased product embodies a patented idea (but this does NOT extend to copyrightable works like code or documentation or possibly layout) then there is no need for reverse engineering, since the patent is an openly published document. A patent holder need only demonstrate that his patent covers the ideas embodied in someone else's product to be able to sue for patent royalties. This is one of the reasons why competing products are sometimes purchased during R&D: to ensure that there is sufficient design distance from products of other companies in order to stay clear of litigation.
In this instance though, LANCOR appears not to know exactly what they are claiming.
If it's copyright violation, then they have no claim if OLPC changed their design before selling any units, since copyright law doesn't come into play in respect of lab prototypes as they have no commercial impact on any party.
If it's patent infringement, then they need to show that such infringement exists in the commercial product (since patent royalties are per unit), which they have not done. However, claiming additional damages will be nigh-on impossible since the OLPC is not a competing product in LANCOR's keyboard market. Claiming royalties is still possible though, whether or not there are additional damages.
We know what's really going on here of course (a 2-bit parasite outfit just having a go in the supportive environment of their massively corrupt country), but if they are at least pretending to adhere to legal process then they need to be clear on what they're claiming, and to distinguish between copyrights and patents.
They're far from being clear on that at the moment.
When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing. It's always fun to look at free trade and say, geez, look at what the third world is doing to the USA, but, sometimes, you have to look the other way around.
The cost-benefit analyse is obviously in favour of having the OLPC. An educated society is much more valuable than the potential of developing a computer-component manufacturing sector.
Education is the most precious thing in society. Even in wealthy countries, those who are uneducated are effectively sentenced to a life of poverty, hardship and bad health. The wealth and benefits of our modern society can, to a large extent, be attributed to mass education.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
...there will be dogs trying to steal it from you and parasites trying to bleed it from you. It is a very sad fact of life, and probably the primary reason the Libertarian party exists. I'm not Libertarian, but it's easy to see why they can't stand the government taking so much money in taxes to be stolen or pissed away. Some see it as a necessary evil (so we can have roads, bridges, public schools, a military), while others see it as not so necessary.
Either way, we should've clipped Bush's wings before he invaded Iraq by forcing him to adhere to the balanced budget amendment. This deficit spending is going to destroy the US.
I expected to see more Nigerian scam e-mail jokes in this discussion.
who knew?
What does it matter? Go elsewhere.
Anyone who seriously thinks the OLPC is going to change anything in a place like Nigeria is living in fairly land.
There are other poverty-stricken places on Earth that have a much better chance of benefiting.