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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?"
I was unable to find any more sources for this information, as something like Kodak sueing for a patent on "electronic camera utilizing image compression and digital storage" seems like one of those typical press exaggerations.
However, if this really is a patent held by Kodak this is just another example of the failure of the patent system to issue appopriate tecchnology patents. This is just like the "One Click Order" patent that Amazon was trying to enforce a while ago.
I don't understand how a patent could be issued for "electronic camera utilizing image compression and digital storage" when it is simply the assembly of dozens of really patent worth technologies: CCD image sensor, electronicaly programmable non-volitile memory, compression algorithims, and the like
I sincerely hope that this is either a press exaggeration, otherwise it is clear that technology patent problems are still persisting.
Looks like SCO's business model is catching on. If you can't innovate, litigate! Maybe we could make the Kodak icon the EPCOT Center too? It will be a symbol for all companies whose business model revolves around suing those who were successful where they were not.
As reader Nekura2025 asks "Um, doesn't that apply to all digital cameras?" Sure it does...but you need to pick the target with the most money first.
Patents only exist if it would not be OBVIOUS.
Lets go through this. I'm a digital camera maker. Technology is that space is limited, and at the beginning, so is picture resolution.
The obvious combination of the facts is this: We would COMPRESS the images and store them on a medium.
Technology patents are stupid. People should stop being so damn greedy.
Jay | http://oldos.org
Besides that, Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Olympus and many others use Kodak CCD chips in their cameras. Sony uses Sony chips in their cameras.
Say what you want about obvious patents, but Kodak is no SCO - they aren't desperate or stupid enough to sue their own customers.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Before raking Kodak over the coals, has anybody bothered to check and see if maybe all the other digital camera manufdacturers are already licensing Kodak's patents?
I've heard that Japanese companies tend to be risk averse and prone to settle, regardless of the merits of the case.
I've also heard that because of the above, companies with US patents will often sue Japanese companies using the US patent as the basis.
The hope is that the Japanese company will settle, which strengthens the patent holder's hand in the next lawsuit.
I don't know what the solution to this one is but as it stands the current system of compensating inventors, innovators and artists is straining and about ready to burst. There needs to be widescale reform.
Looking at individual people and companies suing each other is like trying to tell the history of a world war by looking at a single hand to hand fight battle.
I think we need to scrap the system and start again but realistically I couldn't even tell you with what. This is the best I can come up with off the top of my head for patents and I'm sure there are plenty of holes in this idea:
a) A percentage (say 20% or 30%) of the profits made in selling a product is set aside to be payed to those who contributed ideas to its development.
b) This is then distributed among all inventors contributing to the product by a central body. Submissions from the manufacturer and the parties contributing technology could be addressed.
c) No inventor would have the right to disallow anyone from using their invention. The information would be free, and in order to be paid for it the inventor would still have to lodge a document similar to the patent with the central body.
This would mean that:
1) A company producing a product would no longer have to worry about whether it was using patented technology. They already know what percentage of profit they are paying and there will be no surprises or lawsuits.
2) No company could lock another company out of using a good idea.
Copyright could operate similarly. Middle men who haven't directly contributed technology or ideas should be cut out. They should be paid for distribution as a service and not "own" the art.
Immediate problems I can see with this scheme are:
i) The massive costs of administration of a central body and deciding the spilt as given to the different inventors (likely to eclipse current court costs).
ii) Problems with shifting from the existing system.
I'm sure I'll have other problems pointed out. All I do know for sure is that the current system is BADLY broken, and is wasting human effort and stiffling innovation and creativity.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
First of all, SCO probably was hoping IBM would buy them out.
Secondly, Kodak has been at the forefront of digital imaging technology research from the outset. Kodak has been making the transition from film to digital over the past 15 years. Since film is still used in many industries and in many parts of the world, they are correct not to completely abandon the film business. That doesn't mean they haven't been developing and using cutting edge technology.
Thirdly, SCO didn't invent IP lawsuits. SCO's innovation is in substituting a media circus for solid evidence and good lawyering. There are many IP lawsuits you never hear about because the parties DON'T call press conferences.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Alexander Graham Bell didn't invent the telephone either, by your meaning... he was just ahead of everyone else in applying for the patent. There's nothing wrong with this because the technology at the time the patent was applied for was still obscure. (Any such patent that you tried to apply for now, however, even if no patents had ever yet been awarded in this area, would be rejected because they would be considered too obvious).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Software patents were not allowed until 1981 with Diamond v. Diehr, and did not take off until the mid-eighties. For instance, the company I worked for in 1986 got the patent for template matching in computer vision (which I nope none of you are violating.) We thought it was absurd that the government would accept a patent on such an obvious thing -- but it was what the managers and lawyers wanted to do...
Xerox did the Star development through the mid and late 70s. Nobody thought of patenting algorithmic or "soft" inventions at that time.
http://xeroxstar.tripod.com/
The principle patentable item was probably the mouse, but Xerox did not invent that.
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa081
At that time you probably could not have patented ALL mice anyway (like you could now) but just a certain implementation of a mouse. For an analog look at Xerox vs Palm -- unistrokes vs graffiti. If graffiti had been hardware (??) and it had been 1975 instead of 2000, the differences between the two would have probably been enough to let palm patent graffiti. But Xerox somehow got a patent on ALL single-stroke (or gesture) based alphabets, when used in a computer context, in a limited input area.
Similarly if Douglas Engelbart had discovered the mouse in 2000, he could have patented ALL mouses plus the algorithms used to associate the mouse with the cursor and everything else involved in a GUI (window frames, etc.)
Xerox's situation is not their fault. They were most productive at a time in history when their work was not yet considered protectable property by the government.
I see a lot of people saying how digital photography was supposedly "totally obvious" in the 1980s. Totally wrong.
I was watching this Japanese documentary (thank goodness it was subtitled!) about canon's development of the digital camera. Some things to keep in mind of the time:
- the processing power to display the image on a computer was so great, it wasn't perceivable to make such an affordable device. Did anyone have 32 bit graphics on their PC in 1983?
- even if the device could be made it would weigh a lot!
According to these canon engineers that developed the digital photo camera, digital photogaphy wasn't perceived as a reality in the early 80s. In fact, the only real r&d (way more r than d) was being put into digital video cams, and that was considered bleeding edge, since a lot of the effort was being put into having a more portable tape-recording video camera.
When Canon finally made a successful prototype, they took it out to a park in Tokyo, where they took a picture of a young lady with a dog. The device was the size of large pizza box! This box weight a lot and took up a lot of power. Sure, it was a prototype, but this was the result of almost 6 years of development.
What we may see as obvious from our 21st century standpoint definitely wasn't so in the early 80s.
I'm just curious, because I just remembered that earlier probes such as the ones you mention made great use of digital photography.
Was it actually NASA that implemented the digital photography, or was it contracted out to a company, like say...Kodak?
Without the possibility of a patent to let a company make some money off of a new invention for a bit, very few companies would be willing to spend money on research and development. Yes, patents can be misused. But without patents you'd have a "free-rider" problem where everyone wants everyone else to put up the time, money, and resources to develop new things, so that they could then simply copy it. In such an environment, almost nobody will be willing to innovate.
The businesses that will die will be the ones who put money into R&D. That includes those who fund university research. I sincerely doubt in the environment you seem to want we would be able to innovate or create anything. However, since our forefathers got along fine with whale oil and candles, I guess we don't actually need too many of the innovations since then.
That tired joke got modded up not because it's almost chuckle-inducing, but because it's social commentary. The funny part is that the idea is blindingly obvious and shouldn't be worth (puts pinky to lips) one million dollars. The sad part is that, yes, it is.
Imagine that a slashdotter wrote one e-mail to a representative or a government body for every 20 posts he or she wrote here. Even better if a physical letter were sent through the mail.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I do R&D in microelectronics. Most of the projects I work in involve an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, of equipment and manpower.
I think you are a bit naive, here. Hundreds of thousands of dollars barely pays for the costs of a patent, let alone any kind of significant R&D project.
When the final product comes out our profits are figured not only on production costs, but those development costs. If we did not have a patent for our devices, a week after we come out with a new product, another company would be able to sell the same product at a lower cost because they did not have to spend the money to do the development work. Hence anything they make over production costs will already be profit.
That's a completely naive analysis of cost structure. Even if the other company were completely copying your product, in addition to production, they would have to spend a lot of money on development and marketing, and reverse engineering is often more costly than just doing the research themselves.
Thus at least in my own specific experience (and yes, in my self interest, since I'd be out of a job) cutting edge technology would not be able to exist as it is today. There is no way we can just make small changes, because every little change we make means we have to retool at least some of the fab line. So when we turn out a new product, it has to be a significant step above what we previously had, to justify the expense of the changeover.
See, here you contradict yourself. On the one hand, you claim that your competitors can crank out copies of your products with no more than production costs, and on the other hand, you say that even small changes require you to "retool your fab".
The logial conclusion? Your company is uncompetitive and you are using patents to try to make up for the fact that your company doesn't know how to run its business and engineering operations. And what does that tell us? That your company should go out of business and be replaced by something more efficient. Too bad that, as you are telling us, your inefficient company has gotten 20 year monopolies that will let them continue to extort money from other, more efficient manufacturers until long after any of your company's R&D operations have shut down.
I suppose I could try to make a new device within the constraints of what we already have the capability of making. But in the competitive world that I live in, if we already have the capability to make it, chances are someone else has already done it.
Again, you are admitting that the patent system, for you, is not a way of encouraging innovation. Because if "someone else has already done it", it means that "it" is easy to do for lots of people and the patent system essentially becomes a lottery for who will win a monopoly for the next 20 years (only large companies with big legal staffs can enter that lottery, however).
I am not playing. This is my livihood we're talking about here. If we were not able to patent our products, I would not be able to go to my boss
You are just looking for the government to give your company a nice, guaranteed handout for the next 20 years because you have already told us that (1) your company is uncompetitive when it comes to manufacturing and (2) the things you "invent" are so simple that there are lots of other companies who could already be manufacturing them.
If we are going to give government handouts to research, let's do it more efficiently than the patent system: invest the money directly in research. That way, at least the technological advances that are made will be manufactured by efficient companies, not by companies like yours, which obviously seem to invest more in their legal staff than in their engineering staff.
And if we are going to give companies temporary monopolies, let's make them a more meaningful lifespan: to protect the kind of research that goes into your products (you yourself told us that your lifecycle is very short), 3-5 years ought to be sufficient.
somehow they both still make money without one holding a patent on the "temporary storage space intended to be utilized by humans in an overnight capacity." and alot of patents are getting that broad nowadays.
If you really bother to read the patent, they're claiming a patent on image buffering and asynchronous processing (specifically, compression) in digital cameras. They spend the time to properly acknowledge prior art, and then clearly explain their additions.
This isn't a claim on all digital cameras (just a reminder for those who can't be bothered to process information outside of soundbites...). The patent application states many problems surrounding the issues of the time; among them are the availability of memory cards of any size (the biggest one they could find was 512K - not even big enough for a single 640x480x24 image).
Their negotiations with Sony probably revolve around either the buffering claim, the compression claim, or the removable memory card claim. Or mix-and-match. After three years of negotiations, they apparently decided a lawsuit was more profitable.
And as for Kodak being way behind the digital imaging game - ask yourself which camera has the highest current resolution. For 35mm, it's the Kodak DC14n at 13.7MP. For medium-format cameras, it's the Kodak DCS Pro Back at 16.6MP. I've been told they aren't the most reliable units on the market, but they are at the cutting edge of technology. Kodak realized it was losing the non-speciality film market (excepting one-shot cameras) many years ago. They've been thinking digital ever since.
Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry -- Mark Twain
Kodak suffered a huge patent loss to Polaroid about 15 years ago. Kodak had to pay a large settlement to Polaroid, had to discontinue sale and production of their "instant camera" film, and gave significant discounts as compensation to the owners of suddenly obsolete Kodak cameras. Perhaps the pain of those events has encouraged Kodak to be more aggressive defending their own patents.