Wednesday, November 28th 2007
Nigerian Firm Sues One Laptop Per Child Foundation
No doubt most techPowerUp! readers will have heard of the One Laptop Per Child project which aims to help developing companies by providing them with cheap (the aim is $100 eventually) laptops, primarily focused on education purposes. However, the project could face some trouble as a Nigerian firm, Lagos Analysis Corp., is now trying to sue the OLPC foundation for illegally reverse engineering the company's software drivers in order to make the keypad on the laptops more accent mark friendly to users. According to Lagos Analysis Corp., the 'alt gr' key on the laptop's keyboard has the same functionality as the 'shift2' button on the firm's own keyboard. The OLPC foundation has responded with the following comment:
Source:
Reg Hardware
One Laptop per Child, a non-profit educational organization, has hear that Lagos Analysis Corp. (LANCOR) has sued OLPC in Nigeria, but OLPC has not seen any legal papers related to the alleged suit at this time. OLPC has the utmost respect for the rights of intellectual property owners. To OLPC's knowledge, all of the intellectual property used in the XO Laptop is either owned by OLPC or properly licensed. Until we have a copy of the claim and have had time to review it, we will not be commenting further on the matter.
40 Comments on Nigerian Firm Sues One Laptop Per Child Foundation
It's all about THIS keyboard and what "purples" show up on the OLPC keyboard
Oh dear, look where LANCOR put all those QWERTY and $ keys. Oh dear, slap, slap, looks like they've been "reverse engineering" the QWERTY! LOL. I wonder how much money they paid to MS for the "windows logo". Nothing? Oh dear, slap, slap. Get MS to sue them FIRST for PRIOR infringment, and sue them to bankruptcy BEFORE poor old OLPC has to go to court. Quick OLPC, 411 to our friend Bill Gates. He get Balmer and the lawyers all fired up for you!
Edit: I just re-read and saw that it was the software drivers that they claim are reverse engineered. Still, don't they realize that this tech is not even close to new? I just don't see them winning this against OLPC.
I smell LAWSUIT !!!!
gmail filter catch like the 99% of spam, but still sometimes one mail goes to my inbox
that country is the most corrupt one (well, maybe my country venezuela is the winner now)
About the OLPC: the only outcome of this will be that OLPC's might not be sold in Nigeria. Considering what that country does with computers when they get them, though, I'll count this as a blessing.
And that's just one lawsuit. Where's the "many?" :p