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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.
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....
Putting a bunch of Nigerian-language characters onto a keyboard doesn't qualify as an "invention"; it's exactly what's been done for hundreds of other languages around the world since before Nigerian-language characters were in the Unicode standard even (which, I might point out, that same generous West put in after working hard to create those standards in the first place and then giving them to poor countries like Nigeria for free). Perhaps the West should demand royalties from this company for using its technologies like Unicode and keyboards in the first place, haha, right.
I'm afraid this is just how things go here in Africa, and as someone else pointed out, why it'll probably remain 3rd-world indefinitely. Try give a hand to Africa, and it will demand an arm, and then try kill you for not giving the entire arm. Mod me whatever, but I've lived here all my life and seen this kind of thing over and over, facts are just facts, I wouldn't expect someone who hasn't lived here to get it.
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
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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.
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I see a trend here?
- "Linux stole unix code!"
- "Oh really? Which lines, exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."
- "Linux infringes 235 of our patents"
- "That's likely, you patented the obvious. We'll see when IBM starts complaining about their patents you likely infringe upon. BTW, Which ones?"
- "I'm not telling."
- "OLPC steals our patented keyboard input method"
- "Oh really? Which ones exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."
I'm reconsidering the real cruelty of the good ol' times where justice was administered by the king, and if you looked like you were making him lose time on useless technicalities you were going to be hanged.
I haven't lived in Africa, but I have lived in under-developed nations a large portion of my life. To be honest, you hit the nail on the head, and it's not just limited to Africa. The problem with aid agencies is that they are just as corrupt, if not more, than the governments they are trying to protect the citizens from.
Aid agencies need to be a lot stricter on their staff members and have stiffer penalties for any transgressions - you know, like a bit of gaol time in a dingy cell rather than painting them as a Martyr like the "Chad Children Thieves".
Tutorial:
Q: Should the word "Nazi" be capitalized?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you hold article comments to the same grammatical standards as the articles themselves?
A: No.
Q: What do you call someone who does the above for no reason other than to attract attention and cause disruption?
A: A troll.
Tutorial
Q: Is "it offends at least one person" a single hope?
A: Yes.
Q: Should "hopes" therefore be "hope"?
A: Yes.
Q: ??
A: Profit!!
i forget