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Kodak Hits Hard at Apple and RIM with Patent Lawsuit
Apple, Inc. and Research In Motion have been named in patent complaints filed by Eastman Kodak with the International Trade Commission. Kodak is seeking to leverage its patent portfolio as smartphones hurt sales of digital cameras. Kodak has already settled with Samsung. Kodak also filed two suits against Apple in U.S. District Court.
Kodak is asking the ITC for a limited exclusion order preventing the importation of specific mobile handsets featuring digital cameras. Kodak Chief Intellectual Property Officer Laura Quatela noted that Kodak has a long history of digital-imaging innovation and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the creation of its patent portfolio.
"In the case of Apple and RIM, we've had discussions for years with both companies in an attempt to resolve this issue amicably, and we have not been able to reach a satisfactory agreement," Quatela said. "In light of that, we are taking this action to ensure that we protect the interests of our shareholders and the existing licensees of our technology."
Patent Leverage
Kodak's sales of stand-alone digital cameras have been impacted by the rise in popularity of camera-enabled cellular handsets and smartphones. According to Gartner, a huge number of mobile devices with digital-imaging capabilities shipped in 2009.
"For worldwide in 2009, we expect 78 percent of the handsets will have had some sort of camera functionality," said Tuong Nguyen, a principal analyst at Gartner. "We break this total up into six categories, with handsets under one megapixels accounting for 24.8 percent; one megapixel, 12 percent; two megapixels, 27.6 percent; three megapixels, 22.5 percent; five megapixels, 10.4 percent; and over eight megapixels, 2.7 percent."
In response to the growing mobile-device threat , Kodak has already begun leveraging its patent portfolio to boost the company's bottom line through royalty-generating cross-license agreements such as one with Samsung Electronics that the imaging pioneer announced Monday. Kodak's agreement with Samsung settles patent-infringement proceedings before U.S. and German courts as well as the ITC, where an administrative law judge ruled in December that Samsung had infringed a valid and enforceable Kodak patent.
The cross-license agreement with Samsung "validates the strength of Kodak's intellectual-property portfolio," Quatela said. A company spokesperson also noted that Kodak's ITC complaint against Apple and RIM involves the very U.S. patent covering color image preview that "was part of the recent Kodak-Samsung ITC case." The patent simplifies mapping of the huge number of pixels generated by high-resolution image sensors onto lower-resolution LCD screens.
Targeting the iPhone
Kodak also launched two lawsuits against Apple Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. Like Kodak's complaints against Apple and RIM before the ITC, the first of Kodak's two court actions accuse Apple of infringing patented technology covering image preview and the processing of images of different resolutions.
Kodak's second complaint -- which involves two patents previously cited in a Kodak lawsuit filed against Sun Microsystems -- pertains to any Apple product that uses a patented processing method by which a computer program can "ask for help" from another application to carry out certain computer-oriented functions. According to Kodak, a federal jury determined in a 2004 trial that Sun's Java programming technology had infringed the company's patents. Kodak said Sun Microsystems ultimately settled the suit by agreeing to pay for a license.
Kodak's primary interest is not to disrupt the availability of any product but to obtain fair compensation for the use of its technology, Quatela noted. "There's a basic issue of fairness that needs to be addressed," Quatela said. "Those devices use Kodak technology, and we are merely seeking compensation for the use of our technology in their products."
RIM said in an e-mail that it typically declines to comment on litigation. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for its response to the new lawsuits.
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