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In lugnet.robotics, Jonathan Knudsen writes:
> At 08:59 PM 9/3/99 GMT, you wrote:
> > Jonathan Knudsen <lego-robotics@crynwr.com> wrote:
> > > Finally, the title will probably change, to avoid
> > > legal trouble with you-know-who.
> >
> > Really? Lawyers are silly. What possible problem could there be?
>
> The whole thing is kind of silly. LEGO felt that
> we shouldn't be allowed to publish a book without
> paying them a license fee. We didn't think we
> needed to pay a license fee to write about their
> product; after all, we don't do that for anyone
> else, like Sun, or Microsoft.
>
> Basically we need to change the title in
> order to avoid marketplace confusion--it needs
> to be very clear that our product is not produced
> or supported by LEGO. We'll also have
> a prominent disclaimer inside somewhere. We're
> following our lawyers' suggestions to minimize
> our legal risk.
>
> We'll see what happens.
>
> Jonathan
What happened (apparently) is that LEGO now has their cake and eats it too. This
makes me sick.
I just discovered their page devoted to (quote) "some 'introductory' Books about
LEGO MINDSTORMS." There I see two books, Jonathan's O'Reilly and Dave's NQC book
with obvious links to Amazon.com for online purchasing. LEGO has shamelessly
added an Amazon.com _associate_code_ to the URLs! Not only does this look
"cheap" but I see no mention of where those dollars go. ...that's 15% taken from
every direct sale. Is this "global company" _so_ in need of cash?
If TLC is seriously sponging money through the needs of the adult robotics
community (due to lacking in their own provisions and foresight), then I have
only one word for it. Sleazy!
See for yourselves. The link is straight off the legomindstorms.com main page.
Anyone know how long it has been there?
-Suz.
Boy, it's a good thing LUGNET rules make me watch my language because right now
my ire is steaming full blast.
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Message has 4 Replies:
 | | Re: O'Reilly book news
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| (...) If your browser doesn't support JavaScript (Lynx, W3M, etc.) or if you're running a browser that does, but you have it disabled, you won't be able to load the page. But if you still want to view the page, here's the page's actual URL (...) (24 years ago, 7-Apr-00, to lugnet.robotics, lugnet.dear-lego)
| | | Re: O'Reilly book news
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| (...) I assume Jonathan (and ORA) went through the same discussions my publisher did with TLG regarding using "Mindstorms" in a book title. Lego had no problem at all with people writing books...in fact I've gotten a lot of encouraging feedback from (...) (24 years ago, 7-Apr-00, to lugnet.robotics, lugnet.dear-lego) !
| | | RE: O'Reilly book news
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| (...) Ummm, obviously that page isn't visited much by LugNuts. I found it by accident about a month ago after trying to log onto the forums after someone emailed me that they had rendered my compressor in MLCad. The hoops I had to go through to get (...) (24 years ago, 8-Apr-00, to lugnet.robotics, lugnet.dear-lego)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: O'Reilly book news
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| (...) The whole thing is kind of silly. LEGO felt that we shouldn't be allowed to publish a book without paying them a license fee. We didn't think we needed to pay a license fee to write about their product; after all, we don't do that for anyone (...) (25 years ago, 3-Sep-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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