Nigerian Company Sues OLPC For $20M

January 2, 2008 12:35 p.m. EST

Cambridge, MA (AHN) - LANCOR, a Nigerian-owned company incorporated in Massachusetts, has sued for $20 million the One Laptop Per Child organization. The company is also asking a court to forbid the nonprofit OLPC selling the inexpensive laptops in Nigeria.

The lawsuit comes after LANCOR in August demanded $20 million from the OLPC group.

At issue is a claim by LANCOR that the OLPC developers infringed a patent for multilingual keyboards. LANCOR also charges OLPC's XO keyboard includes code 'reverse-engineered' from the Nigerian company's KONYIN keyboard.

According to the Boston Globe, LANCOR founder Ade Oyegbola in 1990 was convicted of bank fraud.

In November, the OLPC effort said a Nigerian commitment to order 1 million XO laptops was undergoing review by the African nation's head of education.