Low-cost Laptop effort sued in Nigeria for $20 million

LANCOR (Lagos Analysis Corporation), a Nigerian company headquartered in Massachusetts, has sued One Laptop Per Child for $20 million in damages and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria.

In August, the company's lawyers publicly accused OLPC of clandestine use of LANCOR product "information," and infringement of intellectual property rights. They claimed Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, purchased 2 of LANCOR's keyboards on August 7, 2006, then, weeks later, the company reverse engineered its XO keyboards to be more like the KB-201s Negroponte allegedly purchased.

Although it showed no proof of its assertion, LANCOR demanded $20 million from OLPC.

OLPC's lawyers responded quickly, declining the $20 million ransom and pointing out to the company the ambiguity of the claim. The non-profit asked for clarification as to which aspects of its multilingual keyboard were allegedly in violation.

Rather than communicate with OLPC, LANCOR went directly to the Nigerian courts, filing what is called a Motion on Notice in the federal high court in the Lagos judicial division. This essentially asks for an injunction until a hearing can be established.

However, there was no date for a hearing on the motion when it was filed, and OLPC reportedly has not been served. The case against OLPC was adjourned until January 15.

Co-defendants in the suit, Growing Business Foundation, LeapSoft, and Alteq (Intel's partner in Nigeria) were also cited as infringing on LANCOR's intellectual property, and searched under an Anton Piller order. Such orders grant the plaintiff the right to search the defendants' facilities for evidence related to the case. The former businesses were not found to possess any incriminating evidence, and Alteq was subsequently withdrawn from the suit.

LANCOR's keyboard has 4 shift keys, an additional 14 Latin characters, 13 diacritics ("tonal marks") and 4 currency symbols.