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Kodak Sues Sony Over Digital Camera Patents
KenC writes "Kodak has filed a lawsuit against Sony alleging that 10 of its patents have been used without permission. Included among the patents as reported via Reuters is electronic camera utilizing image compression and digital storage . Kodak claim the patents involved were issued between 1987 and 2003. More from Bloomberg." As reader Nekura2025 asks "Um, doesn't that apply to all digital cameras?"
In Rochester, where my parents live, everyone they know who works for Kodak prefaces their statements in meetings with "If I'm still here..."
That company is going downhill so fast, it's no real surprise they're turning to other sources for revenue. But it is depressing that such a former juggernaut couldn't keep their innovation once their old technology started becoming obsolete...sad they couldn't leverage their older skills and technology. Uh...by sad, I mean, not sad at all, sorry, take another number.
Or maybe leveraging their older technology is what they're trying to do with these patent suits, I guess...
Source: A documentary on Ansel Adams from 1983 or so, which I saw in the late 1980s in high school photography class.
I can't find anything online about this; too many weblogs about whether Ansel would have actually used digital cameras get in the way of a meaningful search.
While this applies to all digital cameras, almost all digital camera manufacturers pay royalties to Kodak for a license to a number of digital imaging patents. Kodak's labs in Rochester were way out in front of everybody on this, back in the late 80's and early 90's. Unlike Xerox PARC, though, with Xerox's mouse/window based PC's, Kodak filed patents on their innovations, and make a good sum of money licensing them.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
You can patent something that would be obvious if the reason behind it isn't. So did they compress the images so they didn't use so much memory or did they compress them because they wanted to export them as jpeg to be standard or some other reason? A 3rd reason could make the patent valid even if the other two are obvious.
I acknowledged that this might be deceptivly stated. But if it is indeed as it sounds, it would not be the first time.
See this article.
See this article.
See this article.
See this article.
There are countless other articles on similar incidents and concerns as well. I wasn't blindly criticizing the entire system. Knob.
Kodak has a lot of patents that relate to digital photography, some of which date back to the 1960s regarding technology they developed for film cameras or film processing. But all the big camera and digital camera manufacturers cross license each other's patent portfolios, usually on an entire portfolio to entire portfolio basis, with no money being exchanged - it's all very convenient for them, but I bet it's hell if a new company wanted to get into the business.
What is probably happening here is that Kodak wants access to some Sony patents, and needs to leverage the patents they have to get access to it. This is probably just a legal ploy to get Sony back to the bargaining table.
Disclaimer:
Even though I'm currently on contract at Kodak, I don't have any inside information on this case and I'm not involved in digital still cameras. I just know what they told us in the "why you need to apply for patents on your work" lecture.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Well, more correctly, the claims of the patent are what matter, in light of the disclosure, prosecution history and other tools of claim construal.
It seems that every time a patent-related story is posted here, a million Chicken Littles come out of the woodwork to proclaim that we'll all be sued out of house and home, based on the TITLE of the patent. Please understand that the titles of patents are very general in nature, and in no way does the title of a patent define its scope (unless a really good litigator can convince the judge otherwise!).
Thus, a patent styled "Circular Object For Rolling Motion" almost certainly does not entitle its owner to sue someone who makes wheels--rather, you must look to the *claims* of the patent and construe them in light of the specification and what was said during the procuring of the patent, etc., to determine exactly what (if anything) would actually read on (and ostensibly infringe) the claims of the patent.
The more "crowded" a technology area is with prior art, the narrower the claims of a patent must be. So while almost anything is patentable, in a mature art such as automobile mechanicals, you would have to throw so many limitations into your claims during prosecution that often, someone would actually have to try pretty hard to manufacture a product that infringes your patent.
In this case, I was unable to find the numbers of the patents being asserted by Kodak, so I cannot construe the claims. Until we see the actual patents and claims, any rumination on this subject is silly.
Cliff Notes: regardless the name of a patent, it's the CLAIMS that matter.
This is what a patent is supposed to do... to stop people from stealing your invention and making money off of it.
If Kodak is the only company that can manufacture digital cameras right now, so be it... it certainly sucks to be the other manufacturers if that's the case, but if they own the patent, then that's pretty much the bottom line right there. Eventually the patent will expire and the idea will become public domain.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Toon toon! Black and white army!
Number 5016107
Advanced users are users too!
That was one of the largest patent verdicts ever. According to this article, not only did Kodak have to pay over $900M to Polaroid, they had to buy back all their product. In total, it cost them over $3B.
The patent doesn't cover compressing images on a digital camera. It covers one (rather broad, it was filed in 1989) compression algorithm (sounded like JPEG) when used in the entire system.
I can't say definitively, but it sounds as though if the image is compressed before being saved to the media, the patent wouldn't be violated.
Don't read too much into titles of patents. They need to be descriptive, not specific. For instance, patent 6,703,724 (filed in Nov. 2000) is simply titled "Electric Machine". It is an electric machine, but it is a specific one for grinding minerals.
Maybe they'd be doing sony a favor by forcing them to use Kodak CCDs. I have a friend who bought a Sony. He's getting weird purple fringing in backlit areas of his images.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I'm not sure when image compression entered the picture, but unless Kodak came up with it before 1981 and it took them until 1987 or longer to get the patent, it would appear that this constitutes prior art - by Sony themselves.
One thing you have to keep in mind is, all patented devices seem obvious when you have the
benefit of hindsight. The first automobiles were nothing more than an "assembly of dozens of really
patent worth[y] technologies..." If you have the foresight, the skill, and the facilities to glom
them together and make something new then go for it.
See the Selden patent, where a patent attorney claimed patent on the automobile for doing nothing more than assembling "off the shelf" technologies into a single patent, without ever so much as putting together a working prototype.
The patent was eventually broken, but not until one year before it was due to expire.
In the meantime Selden made a good deal of money selling ideas which were not his to begin with. In effect, the patent held even though it was broken, the legal process for challanging a patent taking so long that it often becomes a legally moot issue even though the patent is invalid.
KFG
Why shouldn't we jump to a conclusion by just reading the summary description? That is the first thing that ise used in the threat for a lawsuit. That is what the idiots that we sent to Washington did when they voted the I-CAN-SPAM act. I spoke with a few aides who said that the bill was not printed when they were rushed to vote for it, so they voted on the short title. Of course, they all should be shot for that. Did they learn this from /. or did we learn that from them?
Fight Spammers!
I can't find a concrete reference, but I believe that Canon ships more units and grosses more than Sony.
I did too read the patent (look elsewhere in the comments for a link to it), and I stand by my opinion that it's stupid. The patent seems to be the result of someone thinking of a digital camera, and a group of engineers brainstorming ways it could be made. "It'll have, like, a CCD, and an ADC, and removable media. Or maybe it'll have an indicator saying how much space is left on the removable media." All this is converted into legalese. They don't describe how the parts will be combined, or how the parts work. And if you had asked me, in 1991, to describe how to make a digital camera, I could have brainstormed those things. In short, they didn't do anything, certainly not something worth a million bucks. And see my other post for why it was obvious even when it was patented.
Sorry if it seems like I'm picking on you.
Patents go back over 500 years in English law, upon which the US legal system is based. So, if you think that there were no patent laws prior to the formation of this country, you would be wrong.
If you wish to learn more about patents, there are a variety of sites that can help you. Here is one that has a brief historical summary.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
For those who want to actually read the Kodak patents asserted against Sony, they are 5016107; 5164831; 5493335; 6292218; 4642678; 5373322; 5382976; 4660101; 6542192; and 6573927. Go to the PTO and search for each.