Nigerian Firm Sues One Laptop Per Child Foundation

Jimmy 2004 · Nov 28, 2007

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:

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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

ktr · Nov 28, 2007

STFU, this is a privilege not a right.

panchoman · Nov 28, 2007

how low can you go? suing a non profit organization thats trying to make the world a better and more intelligent place... :shadedshu:

shadedshu

shadedshu:shadedshu

lemonadesoda · Nov 28, 2007

Welcome To Nigeria

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!

ktr · Nov 28, 2007

lemonadesoda said:
Welcome To Nigeria

nothing but scammers and greedy porn lovers. :shadedshu

jocksteeluk · Nov 28, 2007

Stupid ass Nigerians, a vastly oil rich country with the vast majority of the population living is poverty, Muslim and Christian religious tensions rising, a corrupted government, kidnapping for ransom and a world wide stereotype for being conmen. I find the general situation in Nigeria enraging as the are countries with far less resources yet they operate on a far more civilised government and have better infrastructures. OLPC should tell these conmen to just go and FORK OFF!

zekrahminator · Nov 28, 2007

Please keep the country-flaming to a minimum in the news section.

panchoman · Nov 28, 2007

i wouldn't blame nigeria for this, its lagos analysis corp that needs its ass flamed...

wickerman · Nov 28, 2007

I bet OLPC received email notification of the issue but simply deleted it thinking it was the typical Nigerian email fraud attempts :laugh:

You know the ones, like those listed here, pretty funny stuff but I get em all the time :banghead:

Darknova · Nov 28, 2007

Lol, suing a non-profit organisation...that has to be a first surely?

panchoman · Nov 28, 2007

Darknova said:
Lol, suing a non-profit organisation...that has to be a first surely?

nope, linux has been sued(especcially ubuntu and redhat) many times by other oses..

Beertintedgoggles · Nov 28, 2007

And this supposed "intellectual property" is any different than the function button found on most laptops??? Reverse engineering isn't illegal as long as no patents are being trampled upon. If they bought the keyboards it's their right to take them apart, use them as target practice, or set on fire. But once again, if this makes it to the courts they're going to have a hard time differentiating how their shift2 button is functionally different than the function button on laptops so that keys can have more than one value. At that rate, it'd be hard to differentiate it from the shift button on all keyboards to use either the symbols or numbers on the top row of the keyboard (same goes with num lock and the number pad).

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.

Kreij · Nov 28, 2007

Hmmm ... 99.9% of the keys on my Microsoft keyboards do the exact same thing as they do on my logitech keyboards.

I smell LAWSUIT !!!!

sixor · Nov 28, 2007

i hate nigerians because the damn spam by email

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)

mdm-adph · Nov 28, 2007

panchoman said:
nope, linux has been sued(especcially ubuntu and redhat) many times by other oses..

Got any sources for that? The only major lawsuit I'm aware of that went against a company selling Linux was SCO Group v. International Business Machines, Inc., and IBM's pretty much won that.

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.

panchoman · Nov 28, 2007

mdm-adph said:
Got any sources for that? The only major lawsuit I'm aware of that went against a company selling Linux was SCO Group v. International Business Machines, Inc., and IBM's pretty much won that.

heres one: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=41939&highlight=ubuntu+patent

mdm-adph · Nov 28, 2007

panchoman said:
heres one: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=41939&highlight=ubuntu+patent

Oh, the Microsoft-by-proxy lawsuit? We've yet to see just how far this one can go, considering it's only been around for a month. It could be thrown out rather quickly.

And that's just one lawsuit. Where's the "many?"

Chewy · Nov 28, 2007

lemonadesoda said:
Welcome To Nigeria

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!

panchoman · Nov 28, 2007

patents are messed up, i mean you can make a patent for tires that are round and then sue every company for their round tires

Jimmy 2004 · Nov 28, 2007

I personally don't understand why you'd sue a NPO like this. Presumably it is a limited company, and as it has no money the only thing that can possibly happen is that it will be forced to sell its assets (production machinery) to pay any fines and then go out of business. Suing Ubuntu would be even more pointless because they have no real assets worth much.

newtekie1 · Nov 28, 2007

So basically they are sueing over what amounts to a FN key, which has been present on laptops for decades...

hat · Nov 28, 2007

Oh dear god, what has the world come to? :shadedshu

Chewy · Nov 28, 2007

Its Nigeria.. theres some messed up people in this world. especially in under developed parts of the world, thats why Im not overly suprised by this.

PVTCaboose1337 · Nov 29, 2007

I'm glad everyone sees how stupid these people are.

CrAsHnBuRnXp · Nov 29, 2007

Kreij said:
Hmmm ... 99.9% of the keys on my Microsoft keyboards do the exact same thing as they do on my logitech keyboards.

I smell LAWSUIT !!!!

My logitech mouse does the same thing as some mice from Microsoft and Razor. I smell a multi lawsuit!

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