Originally posted on November 29, 2007 @ 11:40 pm
The One Laptop per Child initiative may be helping many children all over the world with its goals but that doesn’t mean that they are going to be immune from any kind of legal action.
The OLPC was recently sued by a company based in Nigeria over what is seen as an infringement of a keyboard design that has a Nigerian patent.
The company, Lagos Analysis Corp., through its CEO and founder Ade Oyegbola, filed charges against OLPC in Nigeria. The claim also includes reverse engineering the software codes that are needed in order to power it.
Nigeria is actually one of the countries that is testing the OLPC. According to an article published by the Wall Street Journal, it’s efforts are being undermined by the supposedly more successful Classmate PC that is the product of an Intel-Microsoft collaboration.
Let’s see how this develops. I for one am a bit skeptical about this. Nigeria is a lovely country but I also know it as the source of all those email scams that ask you for money in exchange for “millions” of dollars.