This is a phenomena that's occurring across the board.
Why do you suppose these patents are worth more $ than the Companies themselves?
It has nothing to do with production, sales figures or end use.
It's about legal extortion and gaining profits for a tiny handful of extortionists who have no interest in making anything.
Once a bulk of patents is acquired by an invisible shell group,
they begin suing every other manufacturer, for instance Fuji, for infringement and in effect extort them for huge sums of $$$,
I should say because the cost of legal defense in court is prohibitive.
So the end result is that consumers pay more across the board, competition is stifled and production is seriously curtailed.
It's been happening in many industries and now it's happening to Kodak, who I'm quite sure are the original point source of many film patents out there.
This, I'm afraid is very bad news for every film manufacturer, unless they can find enough capital to buy the Kodak patent package themselves, which isn't likely to happen since manufacturers usually have their capital tied up in production.
It seems to have gotten to the point where patent law is on the side of the extortionists.
I really hope I'm wrong about this...😱
