In one of those stories of the nattering nabobs of negativism (thank you Spiro Agnew, wherever you are), a A Massachusetts company has sued the OLPC Association, charging the project with stealing its designs for a multilingual keyboard.
Lagos Analysis Corporation, or Lancor, filed the lawsuit in the Federal High Court, Lagos Judicial Division in Nigeria.
The OLPC is accused of illegally reverse-engineering the company's patented keyboard, which, with its four shift keys, allows computers to better handle multiple languages. A settlement would award "substantial" damages and issue a permanent injunction to prevent OLPC from manufacturing and selling its XO laptop.
OLPC released a statement, "To OLPC's knowledge, all of the intellectual property used in the XO Laptop is either owned by OLPC or properly licensed."
The goal of the nonprofit OLPC, founded by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, is to donate laptops to children in developing nations, such as Nigeria, so the irony is that Nigerian children and others would be stymie the OLPC project.
Lancor should be ashamed of themselves. The patent is a simple idea that others can easily emulate and the goal of the OLPC is humanitarian. Even the XO laptop has gradually crept up in price although the Foundation made a sincere effort to keep costs down. Other companies have similar products, such as Encore's Mobilis and Intel's Classmate PC, so the cynicism of filing an infringement on the patent is, well, patently obvious.
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