Lagos Analysis has filed a lawsuit with the Federal Supreme Court in Nigeria, where the company has patented a keyboard with four shift keys codenamed Adé. According to CEO Lagos, Oyegbola, OLPC illegally rewrote the engine to allow computers to handle more languages in a better way.
Lagos Analysis wants to be compensated for losses that OLPC has caused, and wants the court to permanently ban this project to manufacture and sell computer models that are allegedly infringing intellectual property rights.
Oyegbola said he hoped Lagos would reach an agreement with OLPC before the Nigerian court decided. He implied that OLPC may be granted a license to use the patent for a small additional fee. " We hope to sit together to come up with a suitable solution ," Oyegbola said.
The project 'Every One Child Laptop' is copyrighted Picture 1 In a statement released on November 28, OLPC said it had not received any information about the incident, and that OLPC has always strictly followed intellectual property rights. " As far as we know, all intellectual property rights used for these laptops are owned or licensed by OLPC, " said Robert Fadel, OLPC's chief financial officer and operations officer.
The purpose of the OLPC nonprofit project, initiated by Professor Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Institute, is to give laptops to children in developing countries. Starting December 31, users in the US and Canada can spend $ 400 to get 2 OLPC laptops, one for them and one for children abroad.
In addition to filing in the Nigerian court, Lagos is intending to file a lawsuit in the US court within the next 3 weeks if the case is not resolved thoroughly.
Lagos's Shift2 technology was used to create special keyboards (for individual areas) called Konyin Multilingual Keyboards. In Lagos' lawsuit, the company accused OLPC of buying two Konyin keyboards and using them to rewrite the source code for use with OLPC laptops.