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OLPC sued for $20 million over patent |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Thursday, 03 January 2008 |
 Lagos Analysis Corporation (LANCOR) has filed a patent
infringement lawsuit against the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. LANCOR has
obtained a temporary injunction against the distribution of the OLPC XO laptop
in Nigeria and is seeking a permanent injunction as well as $20 million in
damages.
According to Information Week, LANCOR is contending in Nigerian court that OLPC's XO laptop violates a patent it says
it holds on "multilingual keyboards."
According to a letter from the OLPC's attorney to LANCOR that was posted on Groklaw,
I assume that you are not claiming that Lancor has a monopoly on the creation of
multilingual keyboards The OLPC project aims to sell low-cost Linux-based laptops to governments
in bulk for use in classrooms, has been plagued by delays and price increases
since its initial inception.
The XO laptop was initially expected to sell for
$100 per unit, but the cost has climbed to $188. The organization has also
suffered production delays and has faced great difficulty obtaining adequate
bulk deals with governments. OLPC has been seeking financial contributions from
donors and also launched the Give
1 Get 1 initiative.
It doesn't make much business or public relations sense to sue an organization that tries to help communities which might benefit Nigeria. Also, why do they think that they will get $20 million from them when they need public donation to help get the program going.
This seems like classic case of patent trolling without actually thinking it through. It also doesn't help that LANCOR founder Ade Oyegbola has a criminal record, and served a year in
prison after being convicted of bank fraud in Boston in 1990 as reported by Boston Globe.
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