OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
The patent infringement lawsuit was filed on November 22nd, 2007 as a result of OLPC's willful infringement of LANCOR's Nigeria Registered Design Patent #RD8489 and illegal reverse engineering of its keyboard driver source codes for use in the XO Laptops." The patent text is hard to find, but it seems to relate to the design of keyboards which facilitate the typing of text in multiple languages.
Posted Nov 27, 2007 20:36 UTC (Tue)
by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452)
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Posted Nov 27, 2007 21:57 UTC (Tue)
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Posted Nov 27, 2007 20:58 UTC (Tue)
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Posted Nov 27, 2007 21:16 UTC (Tue)
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Posted Nov 28, 2007 7:11 UTC (Wed)
by dwaynebailey (guest, #49311)
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Interesting info. It seems then that they are basing this entirely on the fact that OLPC bought 2 of their keyboards. Since OLPC doesn't seem to use the Shift2 concept, although its hard to see how you could defend that as novel since AltGr has existed for ages, then I'm at a loss as to how they could motivate this. I guess mostly its motivated by the potential loss of income since everyone will now see a keyboard capable of doing multiple languages, which is the main selling point on the Konyin keyboard. Will they claim dead keys and such like as part of their design? I guess the fact that I've made a South African multilingual keyboard, that uses combining characters and AltGr means I'm also an infringer? I think not.
Posted Nov 28, 2007 19:32 UTC (Wed)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
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Posted Nov 28, 2007 15:23 UTC (Wed)
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Posted Nov 28, 2007 21:11 UTC (Wed)
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Posted Dec 2, 2007 11:43 UTC (Sun)
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Posted Dec 2, 2007 15:20 UTC (Sun)
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OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
What could they possibly have patented? What they have "invented" is a keyboard that has each
shift split into two. What could be seen in the driver aside from the scancode of the
additional shift key?
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
Don't know whether the terminology is consistent, but in the US a "Design Patent" is a special
variety of patent that applies to physical designs rather than to technology. That might allow
them to patent the specific arrangement of keys. [IANAL, and design patents are a specialized
area]
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
Did they re-invent the X11 keyboard and the 1987 xmodmap functionality?
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
I don't know about Nigerian law, but they say they are filing a similar lawsuit in the US. Do
they have a US patent? Reverse engineering is not illegal in the US. Doesn't sound like
they'll have much of a case.
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
The OLPC West African keyboard layout is standard xkb, using AltGr to access additional
characters. The assignment of characters to keys is different to that of LANCOR's Konyin
keyboard layout.
Both key arrangement and method of accessing additional characters is different. Not sure how
they can claim a standard XKB file is a reverse engineering of their physical keyboard.
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
"It seems then that they are basing this entirely on the fact that OLPC bought 2 of their
keyboards." and then chose not to use them. Sounds like SCO vs AutoZone, suing former
customers because they are not current customers.
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
> and illegal reverse engineering of its keyboard driver source codes
hm. I wonder which kind of source code needs to be _reverse engineered_.
To me this episode smells suspiciously like the same nigeria connection
otherwise famous for some heartshaking stories about
former-cronies-of-the-toppled-regime-now-victims-of-the-new-one...
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
Isn't Nigeria one of the countries that Intel and Microsoft chose to push their Classmate
OLPC-clone? Perhaps a little corporate espionage going on here? Wouldn't be the first time a
front company was used for this sort of thing.
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
Classmate PC are made by Intel, Operating System is provided by Mandriva, for most of the
computers.
See http://lwn.net/Articles/256517/
Then http://lwn.net/Articles/256723/
Finally http://lwn.net/Articles/257992/
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
Yes, there was an item on the world service last night about the OLPC on the one hand and the
Classmate on the other, both of which are being trialled now in Nigeria. They contrasted the
'Charity' and 'Commercial' approaches, without mentioning the OS or free software once (that I
noticed). An interesting piece nevertheless.
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
"I am Barrister Mark James , a solicitor at law. I was the personal
attorney to late Engineer Mobuto Nabomba, who till his death Worked with
Hillbros, a computer design firm here in Nigeria. On Saturday, 18
February last year 2006, Engr. Nabomba and Eight (8) other foreign workers were abducted by
militant groups active in the Niger Delta Region,
on the process of negotiation by the Federal Government and the
Militant Group unfortunately, Eng.Pitt died, At the time of his death,
Eng. Nabomba had a Patent worth $80.5 Million Dollars..."
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
Gentle Barrister Mark James,
please do not waste our valuable time writing to us of pocket change.
zotz
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
Wow, El Reg has this completely wrong: they are classifying this as a copyright infringement
lawsuit, which makes NO sense. I was mightily puzzled for a while.
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
OMG!
So all these years having this AltGr key here in my keyboard, being used to convert a standard
FI key layout into an international variant of UK and now it turns out it is covered by a
patent...
How come no one out there (in the right position) has already figured out that the patent
system is fundamentally broken?
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
A design patent. An *expired* design patent.
(If it were a normal patent, well, the ZX80 had multiple shift-like keys
producing four (or was it six?) different symbols per key, back in
1980...)