Kodak Still Pushing For $1 Billion in Patent Royalties From Apple and RIM

[MacRumors]

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) is set to announce today whether it will reexamine a preliminary decision ruling that Apple and Research in Motion have not infringed upon a Kodak patent related to digital camera technology. Kodak, which remains confident that it will prevail in the dispute, believes that it can extract on the order of $1 billion in licensing fees from the two companies, on par with royalties it received from Samsung and LG following a fight over the same patent.

A decision is scheduled for about 5 p.m. Washington time today on whether the U.S. International Trade Commission will review a judge's findings from January that Apple's iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry don't violate Kodak's patent on an image- preview feature in camera phones. Opening a review would revive Kodak's effort to extract compensation from Apple and RIM.

"This is a lot of money, big money," said [Kodak CEO Antonio] Perez, who estimates the royalties may be similar to payments the company received from Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc.

Kodak filed the patent suits against Apple and RIM in January 2010, and the ITC agreed a month later to review the case. Apple struck back with a countersuit against Kodak in April 2010 alleging infringement of a number of patents related to image processing, power management, and memory architectures. The ITC agreed in May 2010 to review that case, but has yet to issue a decision on it.

Article Link: Kodak Still Pushing For $1 Billion in Patent Royalties From Apple and RIM

 

[Consultant]

Darn greedy dying company. Go back to making film! Oh wait...

 

[alent1234]

so silly, everyone knows apple invented everything ever made

 

[hayesk]

The difference here is Samsung settled. With $1billion at stake, Apple will likely fight this to the end. And with countersuits on the line, this will get ugly.

 

[ThaDoggg]

Greedy or not, if Apple and RIM are part of some patent infringement they have to pay up.

 

[WiiDSmoker]

Before all you Apple fannies disagree with this; just remember Apple is trying to sue everyone else too.

It's all ridiculous.

 

[alent1234]

the patent was granted in 1997 and basically covers previewing the picture on the little LCD screen.

i remember around that time i saw some professional photographers with $10,000 kodak digital cameras that had that feature. very cool for that time when digital cameras were still new

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

Instead of suing everyone, kodak needs to get on this retro kick and start selling kodachrome camera's and film again for cheap. Stop using digital, start developing.

 

[sarge]

I once sat on a plane next to an intellectual property lawyer who was commuting to NYC for work from Rochester. As it turned out he had once worked for EK and was now working in the city.

When I conveyed my surprised over how strange it was that Eastman Kodak was lagging behind in digital imaging and still focused on film considering they were responsible for much of the technology behind digital imaging, he basically inferred that EK's leadership mismanaged their patent goldmine.

 

[Popeye206]

Before all you Apple fannies disagree with this; just remember Apple is trying to sue everyone else too.

It's all ridiculous.

Disagree. It's not ridiculous. Valid patent protection is great. That's the whole point of a patent to protect your invention. Any company with a valid invention and patent should pursue any and all infringements.

However, there are many high-tech patents that are BS or weak. Plus, I think patent holders should have to make claims of infringement in a reasonable amount of time after a potential infringement. Sitting back and waiting for products to be wildly successful before pursuing a case is nothing but settlement bloat. Finally, there is patent trolling which should be illegal as it's just lawyers looking to cash in on settlements and costs consumers. Patent trolling is like ambulance chasers. Lowest form of greed.

 

[Popeye206]

I once sat on a plane next to an intellectual property lawyer who was commuting to NYC for work from Rochester. As it turned out he had once worked for EK and was now working in the city.

When I conveyed my surprised over how strange it was that Eastman Kodak was lagging behind in digital imaging and still focused on film considering they were responsible for much of the technology behind digital imaging, he basically inferred that EK's leadership mismanaged their patent goldmine.

They mismanaged more than their patents! They were a sinking ship and the captain had his fingers crossed and eyes closed in the 90's and early 2000's. Too little too late.

 

[Preclaro_tipo]

Market Capitalization

http://www.google.com/finance?q=kodak

Kodak's stock is up 11.5% today. (as a result of this news?)

I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about here but their Market capitalization is 938.40M which is, obviously, less that 1 billion.

Maybe Apple, RIM, and whomever else is on their targeted list should just buy Kodak and pool the camera patents.

 

[alent1234]

I once sat on a plane next to an intellectual property lawyer who was commuting to NYC for work from Rochester. As it turned out he had once worked for EK and was now working in the city.

When I conveyed my surprised over how strange it was that Eastman Kodak was lagging behind in digital imaging and still focused on film considering they were responsible for much of the technology behind digital imaging, he basically inferred that EK's leadership mismanaged their patent goldmine.

i bet they had people there with MBA's from good schools running financial what if's and telling management to avoid digital because they will make less money due to not selling the film or anything other than the camera

 

[gnasher729]

i bet they had people there with MBA's from good schools running financial what if's and telling management to avoid digital because they will make less money due to not selling the film or anything other than the camera

Don't know who said it, but "if you don't cannibalise your products, someone else will". Which is exactly what happened to Kodak.

Greedy or not, if Apple and RIM are part of some patent infringement they have to pay up.

First, there is an "if" in that statement. Second, they wouldn't have to pay what Kodak demands, but actual damages. Third, Kodak has a market caps of $944 million, so if Apple and/or RIM thought there was any danger they have to pay $1bn, they would buy the company. Apparently they don't.

 

[toddybody]

Kodak is becoming even more irrelevant...even so, IF Apple DID infringe upon their patents...they should have known better, pay up.

 

[toddybody]

i bet they had people there with MBA's from good schools running financial what if's and telling management to avoid digital because they will make less money due to not selling the film or anything other than the camera

Agreed. BTW: It's a shame how MacRumors has destroyed my perception of acronyms...at first I thought you meant Macbook Air (MBA). LOL...shows where my brain is

 

[sarge]

This serves to highlight why someone like Steve Jobs is so important to a corporation. Most business leaders ( at least the ones I've met on planes ) suffer from an utter lack of imagination. Generally speaking they can only understand things in terms of powerpoints and spreadsheets. Its too bad because Kodak had a lot of brainpower and imagination under their roof and they didn't take advantage of it. Now it's all ex post facto and woulda coulda shoulda.

 

[alent1234]

a lot of it is luck. only reason apple is big is because the former palm CEO found a tiny hard drive and used it to build the ipod. apple got lucky with the smart electronics revolution and rode it. we still have a few years left in this cycle and i don't know what's going to come next.

everyone experimented with limited devices going back to the 1980's but it took other tech like flash memory and wifi to make them a reality. i played with Palm and PocketPC 10 years ago and while they were cool most tasks were useless because you spent as much time putting in data as the time saved. it wasn't until iOS and the apps store where you could do things like select a few recipes and make a shopping list did a PDA become useful

 

[Gasu E.]

i bet they had people there with MBA's from good schools running financial what if's and telling management to avoid digital because they will make less money due to not selling the film or anything other than the camera

They did not avoid digital at all, in fact they were an early entrant to digital. The problem was that they were used to having a lucrative near-monopoly in film, a fat side business in film processing and a nice low-end camera business built around proprietary "connvenience" film packaging. They were now facing aggressive consumer electronics companies who were used to relently feature upgrades and short model lifecycles. Moreover, they could not rely on their film dominance to keep competitors at a disadvantage. In other words, they had to change their business model completely-- from near monopoly to completely competitive-- in order to success in the new business. Only a fraction of companies manage to do this successfully.

Keep in mind, also, due to the increased competition and lack of a film component, that the opportunity for Kodak in digital was much smaller than their film and related businesses. It's very hard to manage a shrinking company, and even harder if you are also trying to reinvent yourself.

 

[Eduardo1971]

Before all you Apple fannies disagree with this; just remember Apple is trying to sue everyone else too.

It's all ridiculous.

Amen. Some people here act like Kodak has no right to sue. Egads! Apple does it all the time also.

 

[robanga]

If there are any questions from children on what careers they should gravitate toward,

Intellectual property attorney should be high on the list. Its replaced sales as a way for company's to gain revenue. Just take the results of other company's sales. No matter that they out executed you on whatever idea you claim.

They all do it now.

 

[inkswamp]

Before all you Apple fannies disagree with this; just remember Apple is trying to sue everyone else too.

It's all ridiculous.

That's rather a sweeping generalization, isn't it? Sure, many lawsuits over patents are silly but does that mean we should discount the legitimate ones?

Amen. Some people here act like Kodak has no right to sue. Egads! Apple does it all the time also.

I don't see a single person on this thread so far saying Kodak has no right to sue, and yet you're third person now to claim people on this site are going to react that way. Where I'm from, that's called a strawman argument and just a thinly veiled way to insult people.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Disagree. It's not ridiculous. Valid patent protection is great. That's the whole point of a patent to protect your invention. Any company with a valid invention and patent should pursue any and all infringements.

However, there are many high-tech patents that are BS or weak. Plus, I think patent holders should have to make claims of infringement in a reasonable amount of time after a potential infringement. Sitting back and waiting for products to be wildly successful before pursuing a case is nothing but settlement bloat. Finally, there is patent trolling which should be illegal as it's just lawyers looking to cash in on settlements and costs consumers. Patent trolling is like ambulance chasers. Lowest form of greed.

As I posted before Kodak once was an amazing company with many discoveries and patents in the imaging field.

Anybody close to Rochester NY should go and see their museum.
(You can also see the factory buildings that are being ripped down)

What a shame for this company to lose its vision and completely miss the digital age. (With a few exceptions)

The problem with patents is that the longer they are someplace dormant and unused it will only be a matter of time until somebody has a similar idea, driven by technological advances.

I would imagine that researching any given patent is very hard, depending on how it is worded and how vague and weak it is.
So, Apple and RIM and others may have looked, but not well enough.
Doesn't make them innocent of course and they will have to pay up, if proven.

A revision of patent laws should include that if a patent filer is not using his patented technology within a certain time period it would become open to others. That forces patent trolls to do something, rather then waiting for somebody with vision to make it successful and then cash in.

Buying Kodak may be a good tactic depending on the outcome, but the place is almost dead at this time and anybody who buys it would most likely buy it with the intention to use the patents and close the company altogether.

Only a matter of time.

 

[kdarling]

it wasn't until iOS and the apps store where you could do things like select a few recipes and make a shopping list did a PDA become useful

Recipe and shopping list Palm / Windows Mobile apps like Pocket Cook date from 2000. That one in particular won awards for years.

What you mean is, it wasn't until iOS that the mass public else took notice. Millions of us were surfing the web and using apps on PDAs, smartphones and tablets long before that.

 

[CylonGlitch]

I would really like to read the patent. Yes, there are some very generic patents out there; some are upheld others are not. Going based on only what I have heard; a 1997 patent for a preview of a picture may not hold water. I say this only because there were video cameras at that time that had the preview screen (I owned one) and it could be argued that this is just an extension of that technology. Thus not a new invention or one that exists with prior art and thus making it invalid.

BUT it depends a lot on the details of the patent. I've been through the litigation process over a generally generic patent. The patent itself was fine, but the lawsuit stretched the coverage of the idea. What happens, and I'm sure is what happened in this case, is that they hand over their patent portfolio to a company that specializes on suing companies for patent violations. The company gets a percentage of everything they win; but the general mode is to sue everyone and hope someone settles. Very often, these companies don't really know what the patent is, they just guess that you have something similar so it must be in violation so they sue. The company who is being sued can settle for much less; or fight it in court to determine if they actually did infringe, which could be just as expensive.

It'll be interesting to see how this one turns out . . . I really need to get back to writing patents, there is big money involved there.