Nigerian Company Sues OLPC Over Two Shift Keys

Cambridge (MA) - A Nigerian entrepreneur has sued the One Laptop Per Child Foundation over its multilingual keyboard. Ade Oyegbola, founder of the Lagos Analysis Corporation, alleges that the foundation copied his special four shift button keyboard dubbed the Konyin Nigeria Multilingual Keyboard. He’s filed suit in Nigerian courts and also promises to bring his legal battle to the United States.

Oyegbola’s design is essentially a keyboard with two extra shift buttons for adding accent marks to vowel. With traditional keyboards this is done with an “Alt” key or by typing in ASCII codes. Ofegbola claims that the foundation purchased computers with his keyboard and then illegally copied the design to the OLPC. He also says the foundation published the keyboard’s source code.

According to the Boston Globe, Oyegbola wants royalties for his hard work of adding two shift keys and if the foundation doesn’t agree then he’s willing to push for a full injunction against sales. What’s interesting in this case is that the OLPC really isn’t meant to make a profit and indeed is currently being tested in several third-world countries, including Nigeria.

Robert Fadel, director of finance and operations at the One Laptop Per Child foundation, told the Globe that he hasn’t seen any legal papers, but that the OLPC founders take intellectual property rights very seriously.