Fujifilm vs Polaroid Cage Match!

Dante_Stella

Dante_Stella

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I don't know if you caught this, but Fujifilm sued Polaroid yesterday in federal court in New York, attempting to invalidate Polaroid's trademark and trade dress for the SX-70/600 style integral instant print. Polaroid apparently had gotten upset when Fujifilm started selling Instax Square, which looks a lot like the "shake it" version of Polaroid.

What do you think about this?

You could see this as a money grab by Polaroid, a blatant knockoff by Fuji of an iconic design, or the trial that could determine the fate of the Impossible Project.

Dante
 
However it shakes out, Polaroid has all the rights in the world to pursue Fujifilm for infringing on their patents and trade marks.

Still, it's not going to induce me to buy either of their products.

PF
 
Wait a minute, I'm missing something here.
1. Polaroid is upset with Fujifilm's Instax Square.
2. So Fujifilm sues Polaroid because Polaroid is upset?

If so, hope Polaroid gets sat on hard by the court. They sued Kodak over their instant film in the early 80's. They won and the much better Kodak system had to be discontinued. Hated Polaroid ever since then and cheered when they went belly up, they deserved it.

Polaroid's greed and stupidity was the cause of the decline and near death of instant photography. Kind of like the Wright brothers delayed the development of airplanes in this country by suing anyone who tried to build airplanes.
 
davidnewtonguitars said:
If Polaroid owns the square, I'm calling dibs on the circle. I'm gonna be rich.
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The original Kodak consumer cameras (were they Brownies?) where "You press the button, and we do the rest" (after sending the entire camera back to Kodak, and they returned it with your prints and a fresh load of film) made circular images, so you might be a little late to the ball.

PF
 
zuiko85 said:
Wait a minute, I'm missing something here.
1. Polaroid is upset with Fujifilm's Instax Square.
2. So Fujifilm sues Polaroid because Polaroid is upset?

If so, hope Polaroid gets sat on hard by the court. They sued Kodak over their instant film in the early 80's. They won and the much better Kodak system had to be discontinued. Hated Polaroid ever since then and cheered when they went belly up, they deserved it.

Polaroid's greed and stupidity was the cause of the decline and near death of instant photography. Kind of like the Wright brothers delayed the development of airplanes in this country by suing anyone who tried to build airplanes.
Click to expand...

So, I guess you are okay with the fact the Kodak ripped off Polaroid by stealing their formula to make instant film. Kodak got what they deserved.

PF
 
farlymac said:
So, I guess you are okay with the fact the Kodak ripped off Polaroid by stealing their formula to make instant film. Kodak got what they deserved.

PF
Click to expand...

Kodak's was a different system and exposed through the back of the film, the polaroid SX70 (SX, pronounced sucks) film exposed through the front, thus the need to reflect the image off a mirror to get a correct, left to right picture.
Kodak's made better images and would have been easier to adapt to medium and large format cameras but noooo, Polaroid figured the way to success was just sue all the competition and wear them out in court.
I still have Colorbrust pictures taken in 1985. Stored in the dark, they still look good.

All a moot point now. Both Polaroid and Kodak (at least the Kodak we knew for decades) no longer exist.
 
Does polaroid, the ones having the patents, still produces anything like it? Are they ctively using those patents and how long are they just sitting on it, not doing anything remotly sensible with them.

Ok, not patents but trademark they abandoned, even less defendable.
 
No, from the article above, PLR IP only marketeers the ip, they do not produce anything. But again, there is the usual muddle between trademark and ip. Trademarks loose their protection if not used or defended after a number of years. But in case of the borders of an instant photograph those borders do have a technical function.
 
zuiko85 said:
Wait a minute, I'm missing something here.
1. Polaroid is upset with Fujifilm's Instax Square.
2. So Fujifilm sues Polaroid because Polaroid is upset?

If so, hope Polaroid gets sat on hard by the court. They sued Kodak over their instant film in the early 80's. They won and the much better Kodak system had to be discontinued. Hated Polaroid ever since then and cheered when they went belly up, they deserved it.

Polaroid's greed and stupidity was the cause of the decline and near death of instant photography. Kind of like the Wright brothers delayed the development of airplanes in this country by suing anyone who tried to build airplanes.
Click to expand...

First, it's not the same Polaroid. New people bought the name, basically.

Second, Polaroid's claim is to the "square format with white border." That's what they say is infringing. That's completely unreasonable IMHO. If Polaroid has dibs on square format with border, think about who else they will blackmail.

Third, Fuji's action is to ask to court to force Polaroid to drop their demand. That's a reasonable action to defend against an unreasonable demand.
 
brbo said:
The producer of the Polaroid Originals films (former Impossible Projects) owns PLR IP.
Click to expand...

Here's a May 2017 article which quotes the very clear press release.

PLR IP is owned by the wealthy Polish family Smolokowski. Wiaczeslaw (Slava) Smolokowski is the majority shareholder in The Impossible Project.

Dante, I don't think this is a cage match. More like just typical legal skirmishing.
 
Fujifilm called Polaroid's bluff and Polaroid is now going to have to defend itself in court at no small cost. Fujifilm could bankrupt Polaroid (aka The Impossible Project) with the legal fees that Polaroid is going to incur.
 
ptpdprinter said:
Fujifilm called Polaroid's bluff and Polaroid is now going to have to defend itself in court at no small cost. Fujifilm could bankrupt Polaroid (aka The Impossible Project) with the legal fees that Polaroid is going to incur.
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Polaroid could simply drop the claim.

Typically, in the patent-troll lawsuits, the costs are very high for the defendant (Fuji in this case), not so high for the plaintiff (Polaroid). Too often, the defendant finds it cheaper to just pay; that fuels the patent-troll business.

Claiming the rights to square with border? That feels like a pattent-troll to me.
 
ColSebastianMoran said:
Typically, in the patent-troll lawsuits, the costs are very high for the defendant (Fuji in this case), not so high for the plaintiff (Polaroid). Too often, the defendant finds it cheaper to just pay; that fuels the patent-troll business.
Click to expand...
In this case, Fuji is the plaintiff. It filed the lawsuit for a declaratory judgment. Polaroid (actually PLR IP) is the defendant. Undoubtedly Fujifilm is going to inundate PLR IP with depositions and document production, and PLR IP is going to hemorrhage legal fees, which it can ill afford to pay.
 
ptpdprinter said:
In this case, Fuji is the plaintiff. It filed the lawsuit for a declaratory judgment. Polaroid (actually PLR IP) is the defendant. Undoubtedly Fujifilm is going to inundate PLR IP with depositions and document production, and PLR IP is going to hemorrhage legal fees, which it can ill afford to pay.
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Yes, in this case, Fuji is plaintiff.

I'm talking about the underlying case in which Polaroid is demanding royalties and would typically go to court as plaintiff to get them.

But, seriously, do you support the idea of Polaroid getting a royalty on any and every square photo with border? I think Polaroid claim is absurd.
 
ColSebastianMoran said:
But, seriously, do you support the idea of Polaroid getting a royalty on any and every square photo with border? I think Polaroid claim is absurd.
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I haven't read their trademark and trade dress documents, so I haven't formed an opinion about who would prevail on the merits. I also don't know if the square Instax is the same size/same proportions/same border widths as SX70, and whether the Instax film requires the wider bottom border for a chemical pod. I am certain that Fujifilm researched Polaroid's IP before it finalized square Instax and felt its design wasn't infringing. I expect Fuji will go to the mat on this, that the litigation will be very expensive, and that Fuji is in a much better position to fund it than PLR IP, which will play a significant role in the outcome. Which is why it was a brilliant move on Fuji's part to be proactive and file as plaintiff for a declaratory judgment rather than allowing PLR IP to take the initiative. I am pretty sure that PLP IP thought they could just send a couple of demand letters and negotiate some royalty payments without actually having to incur the expense of litigating their IP. In all likelihood, PLP IP's response when they were served with the complaint was "Oh s**t". I am looking forward to following this.
 
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