OLPC sued for patent infringement

by Grant Gross

November 28, 2007 —

A Massachusetts company has sued the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Association
for patent infringement, charging the project with stealing its designs for
a multilingual keyboard.

Lagos Analysis Corp., or Lancor, filed the lawsuit Thursday in the Federal
High Court, Lagos Judicial Division in Nigeria, where the company owns a patent
for a four shift-key keyboard, said Adé Oyegbola, Lancor's CEO.

OLPC illegally reverse-engineered
the company's patented keyboard, which, with its four-shift keys, allows computers
to better handle multiple languages, Oyegbola said. Lancor wants the Nigerian
court to award "substantial" damages and issue a permanent injunction
to prevent OLPC from manufacturing and selling its XO laptop.

Oyegbola said he hopes Lancor
can reach a settlement with OLPC before the Nigerian court issues an injunction.
OLPC could have "sought a license and gotten it for a minimal fee,"
he said. "We're hoping ... they can come to their senses, and we sit down
and come to a reasonable settlement."

Lancor, based in Natick, Massachusetts, has tried to reach a settlement with
OLPC but did not get a "reasonable response" from the project, Oyegbola
said.

OLPC released a statement, saying it has not yet seen the legal filings in
the case. "OLPC has the utmost respect for the rights of intellectual property
owners," Robert Fadel, OLPC director of finance and operations, said in
the statement. "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."

The goal of the nonprofit OLPC, founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
professor Nicholas Negroponte, is to donate laptops to children in developing
nations. Through Dec. 31, residents of the U.S. and Canada can donate US$400
and get one laptop for themselves, while sending a second to a child overseas.

In addition to the Nigerian lawsuit, Lancor is looking at filing a patent lawsuit
in U.S. court within three weeks, if the case is not settled by then, Oyegbola
said.

Lancor's Shift2 technology has been used to create region-specific keyboards
called Konyin Multilingual
Keyboards, according to the company. Lancor's lawsuit alleges that OLPC purchased
two Konyin keyboards and used them to reverse-engineer the source codes for
use in OLPC's XO Laptops.

Asked about the goals of OLPC, Nigerian citizen Oyegbola said he didn't have
a strong opinion. Laptops can be useful to children in Africa, but many of them
have more basic needs, he said.

"Children might not need a laptop," he said. "Maybe instead
they need a classroom."

IDG News Service