Kodak Patents The World (or at least a portion of our world)

ddutchison

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Kodak, begins to enforce some of the over 400 patents it holds pertaining to the online display of photography. The article (quoted in full below) is thin on details, but it seem Kodak may be shifting from photographic innovation to patent trolling as its main source of income.

From the BBC article Kodak's patent spat threatens photo web sites



The fallout from a patent dispute between Kodak and web photo site Shutterfly could embroil many online image sites, says patent experts.

Kodak claimed it owns patents regarding the display of online images that is being infringed by Shutterfly. The photo-sharing site disputes these claims and has launched a counter suit. But the landmark case could have ramifications for other popular online photo sites such as Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa.

The past two years have seen a number of cases launched that claim online photo sites have breached patents. But this is the first time such a large, established technology company has sought to assert its rights over online images, said Deborah Bould, a specialist in intellectual property at law firm Pinsent Masons.

Genuine innovation

Kodak's decision to start legal proceedings against Shutterfly will have put scores of web-based photo companies such as Flickr and Google, on high alert, she told BBC News.

"The patents Kodak holds are incredibly broad, effectively covering images that are stored centrally and can be ordered online," she said.
That's likely to mean Kodak will go after other online image sites it believes also infringe its patents, she added. Kodak said it has over 400 similar patents.

"We are committed to protecting these assets from unauthorised use," it said in a statement.

Given the expense of patent cases, many smaller firms may choose to licence Kodak's technology rather than fight claims, said Theo Savvides, head of intellectual property at Osborne Clarke. But firms such as Google and Yahoo "have deep pockets" that would allow them to challenge Kodak's claims, he added.

Such challenges would likely focus on the validity of Kodak's patents, said Ms Bould.

The case may hinge on Kodak's ability to show that when it filed the patents they covered technology that was genuinely innovative, she added.

Kodak has been hit hard by the shift towards digital photography, but has recently shown a greater willingness to assert its rights for technology it believes impinge on its patents.

Earlier this year Kodak said it would sue Apple and BlackBerry maker, Research in Motion, over technology used in their handsets.
 
If Kodak decides to kill milk cow, it will run...say, to China? I think Chinese business would be happy to give home to photo display sites and have all milk.
 
I think Kodak is doing the right thing. They developed this technology and spend large sums on R&D over decades. Everyone likes to hammer Kodak claiming that they missed the boat. Kodak built the boat and the bullet that sunk their own battleships. There is absolutely no company that has done more to create digital photography than Kodak. Why should Kodak not be allowed to profit from their intellectual property.. or better put.. Why should one be so tolerant of Apple and others when it comes to their use of Kodak technology and yet someone think it fine and dandy when these companies go after others.. often for things that they did not even develop.. Let us recall that Apple did not develop the Windowing system but Xerox at PARC.. still did not prevent them from trying to sue Microsoft.. And even their proprietary O/S? Contains free software components not developed by them.. down to its core O/S (freeBSD) and kernel (Mach)..
 
This happened fasterf than I predicted. A while ago on a thread I suggested at some point Kodak would look to the patent licensing as a major revenue stream and if lucrative enough simply sell off the film division as become and intangible asset holding company; simpler, cost effective and finally a return on much of their more recent r&d investment.

I agree with Ed that if one makes an investment they have a right to realize the income associated with the making of an investment and companies that simply are parasitic should not be the only profiteers.
 
Is Kodak doing so bad that they need to search for this kind of income? Isn't it a bit too late (5 - 10 years) to claim rights over "online images" ? I do no know the details and do not claim that Kodak does not have some valid points, but this sounds to me very counter-productive. If me - as a potential Kodak customer who likes to keep his images on the web (be it Flickr, for example) would suddenly have to pay for up to now free service because Flickr will have to buy rights from Kodak - I would not be very keen to get a Kodak camera in the future ...

... or am I getting it wrong?

It just sound like a "counter advertisement" to me ...
 
...They developed this technology and spend large sums on R&D over decades. Everyone likes to hammer Kodak claiming that they missed the boat. Kodak built the boat and the bullet that sunk their own battleships. There is absolutely no company that has done more to create digital photography than Kodak. ...

Up to a point I completely agree. Sorry, I'm absolutely not trying to hammer Kodak - the people who gave us Tri-X+D76, and the worlds first digital press camera, not to mention the whole concept of amature photography. Of course Kodak should profit from its pioneering R&D.

It's just that until today I've never heard of Kodak's name being listed as a pioneer of Internet Technology - which is the field to which the display and sale of online photography properly belongs.

To my eyes, this all smacks of the "one click patent" affair (an admittedly extreme, but real example). The question I have is exactly how much R&D did Kodak actually do to enable the online display/sale of photography?


Kodak patents a broad concept - the display and sales of photography online - but it's many other people who do the actual R&D - make the concept possible, exciting, and even profitable. It's at this point (seemingly) that Kodak steps forward to claim patent infringement - Kodaks sole R&D investment being the lawyers fees necessary for filing the patent in the first place. That's what I think is going on, and if so, it's a sad development for a once proud company.


... Why should one be so tolerant of Apple and others when it comes to their use of Kodak technology and yet someone think it fine and dandy when these companies go after others.. often for things that they did not even develop..
I am equally intolerant of anyone abusing the patent process. My fear is that patent law is inexorably moving to always favour the rights of content purveyors over everyone else, and particularly over the rights of content creators.

I also worry about the day when I receive a note from some organization like the RIAA, telling me that because my personal web site displays photography, it is in infringement of (whoever's) patents, and I must purchase a licence, remove the site, or fight them in court.
 
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this sort of money grabbing really annoys me... Nokias doing it with mobile phones as well currently, and the similarities between nokia and kodak are actually pretty amusing.
 
Sorry Kodak. You have forsaken technologies that were yours - undisputedly - and tried to move into the future with little or no basis for doing so, abandoning all of us who worked with - and purchased - products from your old, abandoned technologies. You did not develop the online sharing of photographs, so just walk away.

ps, please do not stop making HC110, D76 or trix. You can quit making those third rate digicams any time though. And as to the wildly popular, Kodak online photo community ... oh wait, THERE ISN'T ONE!!!
 
It's just that until today I've never heard of Kodak's name being listed as a pioneer of Internet Technology - which is the field to which the display and sale of online photography properly belongs.
Then you have a lot to learn.
And Shutterfly? They were originally founded in 1999. Photo sharing sites had already long existed. Phil Greenspun founded, for example, Photo.net in 1993 and then it was NOT functionally a new or novel idea--- what was novel was their use of Navisever(which is today called AOLserver)/Tcl/Illustra (commercial Postgres which became Informix Universal) to create an open source community portal and CMS suite. This, of course, was not the first open source portal.. they existed well before the first line of code was written for WWW as campus information systems--- one such system called Gopher was so widely popular the Tim B-L said "We're too late" that "there is no way we can catch up the momentum of Gopher".. "the window of opportunity is closed"... "nobody will bother writing HTML". And, of course, the WWW was not new.. it was a poor man's take on Dynatext .. and electronic book and hypertext systems developed at Brown University.. which goes back to Ted Nelson.. back back to the early 1970s hanging out with RESISTORS/East (I recall he did visit West at least once)..

Even in the early 1990s.. (and we're talking about years before Shutterfly got it first code) at the core of "photo sharing" was some central Kodak technologies--- that in turn were central to Kodak's vision for digital phtotography.
And Kodak? They go back... well before the Photo-CD which they launched in 1992.. Back when the ARPAnet was being born I recall some work that Kodak funded. Sure .. it did not make headlines.. How many here realize that battery powered wireless (packet radio) networked terminals using plasma displays and connected to the ARPAnet were reality in....... 1973.. (and net itself, the ALOHA was started in 1971)..

And before this.. before even digital computers.. there was research at Zeiss in the 1920s and 30s.. Emanuel Goldberg's work comes to mind...
 
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