Adding insult to injury: One Laptop Per Child sued for patent infringement

It's unclear where Lagos Analysis Corp. (LANCOR) expects the One Laptop Per Child project to come up with the money, but it has sued OLPC, anyway, for patent infringement. To make matters more complicated, the suit was brought in the Nigerian-owned company's backyard in Lagos, Nigeria. I'm sure the court will have no bias whatsoever....

LANCOR is seeking big money damages because, um, it has lost millions selling $100 PCs to developing nations (???):

The patent infringement lawsuit was filed on November 22nd, 2007 as a result of OLPC's [alleged] willful infringement of LANCOR's Nigeria Registered Design Patent # RD8489 and illegal reverse engineering of its keyboard driver source codes for use in the XO Laptops.

LANCOR is seeking substantial damages as well as a permanent injunction to prevent OLPC from continuing to unlawfully manufacture, sell, distribute or offer for sale the XO Laptop, and any other products infringing on the RD8489 and using the illegally acquired keyboard driver source codes.

Given that OLPC has struggled to come up with the money to manufacture its laptops in high volumes, this seems like the poor robbing the also-poor. Note to LANCOR: OLPC doesn't have any money. You'd do better to sue Intel or Microsoft for their efforts to help children in developing markets.

LANCOR makes SCO look like Santa Claus.

[Arbalest05]

So OLPC will pull out of Nigeria. Nigerian patents are not valid in any other country. The OLPC people will say good bye to Nigeria. Lancor may win a summary judgment but no fine need ever be paid.

[mesmorino]

Nigerian patents are not valid in any other country? That's a dumb statement, no offence intended. It's like saying, American patents are not valid in any other country, which means i could buy a copy of microsoft windows vista in new york, take it to australia and reverse engineer it all i wanted. Hell, if that statement were true, i could just take it across the border to either canada or mexico

[Molticappelli]

Matt, you write "Note to LANCOR: OLPC doesn't have any money."

I haven't checked myself, but if we believe the reporting work done by the Wall Street Journal, they do, actually.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586754115002717.html> states " Robert Fadel, its director of finance and operations, says the nonprofit has enough funding to last years. ... As of September, it had $8.7 million in cash on hand, an internal document indicates."

So maybe LANCOR did this little research before filing suit?

[Matt Asay]

I meant "real money." If I'm going through the bother of filing a patent suit (which costs, on average, $2-5 million to litigate) I better expect a much bigger return on that investment. $8.7 million isn't worth it.

[Penguinisto]

Let's see... Microsoft gets caught trying to bribe a Nigerian company to replace gov't-purchased Linux laptops with Windows, and suddenly this little puppet company pops up and screams about patent violations?

How much does anyone want to be that there's a bit of MSFT's money that's getting fed into this one, a'la SCO?

/P

[X-C3PO]

This only a misleading blog article.
If you DO have much spare time to care about the OLPC relative, please focus on how many poor kids can get it. And does the OLPC really help the poor kids in learning.

[Matt Asay]

I think it's highly relevant to OLPC's ability to serve developing nations if it's mired in legal controversy or not. Sorry we disagree on that.

[cybervigilante]

Typical - try to do good and swindling scumbags attack you. Nigeria is one rotten country. I get stupip Nigerian scams in my email every day, and their government aids and abets the swindlers. Of course they'll screw their own kids so some rotten crook can try to extort money from a good charity.

[komrad7800]

Thanks for this article. Really helpful.
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