"Akash manufacturing partners Datawind and Quad part ways"

Datawind, the maker of Aakash, now claims that it owns the copyright of the tablet and stated that contract manufacturer Quad Electronics violated its intellectual property right by signing a direct agreement with IIT-Rajasthan for development of the device. This is  not the first controversy that has plagued India’s much touted Rs 3000 tablet device.

Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said in a statement: ”Our team internally developed Aakash and sub-contracted the assembly to Quad Electronics based on

its own design. Therefore, the Intellectual Property Rights of the tablet belong to Datawind.”

He claimed that Quad had signed a non-disclosure agreement with IIT-Rajasthan and a manufacturing services agreement confirming this.

“Quad Electronics breached Datawind’s intellectual property, circumvented their relationship with IIT-Rajasthan, signed a direct MoU (memorandum of understanding) with them for development of next generation device and then sold off their inventory in the open market,” Tuli said.

Quad Electronics and IIT-Rajasthan did not respond to emails sent for comments.

Tuli said that Datawind has sent a notice to company and will approach the court against violation of agreement by Quad Electronics. “We have served notice, and will file in court if it cannot be resolved,” he said.

Datawind said that the company has paid Quad Electronics for all units delivered to Datawind, except for the 600 units that remain unpaid by IIT-Rajasthan.

“Datawind’s counter claim against Quad exceeds any amount due to them. There is no further payment due to Quad, contrary to their allegations,” Tuli said.

It was reported that a Quad executive had alleged that payment is due and it has served legal notice to Datawind.

Tuli said that it is working on the second generation of the Aakash tablet and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal has announced in Parliament that DataWind will be supplying 1 lakh Aakash tablets through IIT-Bombay.

“In response to concern about tardy customer response. Datawind would like to state that their toll-free number is working – but since it receives almost 40,000 calls per day, there is often a logjam resulting in incomplete calls,” he said.

Tuli added that any person that has made a deposit, is responded to within 48 hours of receipt of payment and is provided a specific e-mail address and specific phone number to call for queries, instead of the toll-free number.

The Datawind- IIT Rajasthan relationship has been one of mutual hatred. Earlier this month according to a TOI report, Tuli has lashed out at IIT-Rajasthan by stating that the institute was trying to defame Datawind by questioning the quality standards of the device.

“When we were awarded the contract, there was only a specification sheet. But when we started supplying the tablets, IIT Rajasthan started rejecting the tablet based on biased and unscientific testing methodology”, he had said in an earlier statement to TOI.

IIT-Rajasthan has raised serious doubts over the quality of Aakash tablets in the recent past.