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OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria
A company called Lagos Analysis Corporation has sent out a press
release announcing a patent infringement lawsuit against the One Laptop
Per Child project. "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.
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OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria Posted Nov 27, 2007 20:36 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (guest, #43452) [Link] 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 Posted Nov 27, 2007 21:57 UTC (Tue) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] 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 Posted Nov 27, 2007 20:58 UTC (Tue) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link] Did they re-invent the X11 keyboard and the 1987 xmodmap functionality?
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria Posted Nov 27, 2007 21:16 UTC (Tue) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] 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 Posted Nov 27, 2007 22:22 UTC (Tue) by andrewc (guest, #49308) [Link] 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 Posted Nov 28, 2007 7:11 UTC (Wed) by dwaynebailey (guest, #49311) [Link] 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.
OLPC sued for patent infringement in Nigeria Posted Nov 28, 2007 19:32 UTC (Wed) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] "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 Posted Nov 28, 2007 0:18 UTC (Wed) by and (guest, #2883) [Link] > 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 Posted Nov 28, 2007 4:09 UTC (Wed) by Niels (guest, #49310) [Link] 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 Posted Nov 28, 2007 14:12 UTC (Wed) by meuh (subscriber, #22042) [Link] 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 Posted Nov 28, 2007 16:37 UTC (Wed) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] 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 Posted Nov 28, 2007 8:08 UTC (Wed) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link] "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 Posted Nov 28, 2007 15:23 UTC (Wed) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] 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 Posted Nov 28, 2007 21:11 UTC (Wed) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] 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 Posted Dec 2, 2007 11:43 UTC (Sun) by climent (subscriber, #7232) [Link] 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 Posted Dec 2, 2007 15:20 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] 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...)
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