Sony files suit against Kodak in US over digital camera patents

[dArKeR]

BLOOMBERG
Friday, Apr 02, 2004,Page 12

Sony Corp, the biggest seller of digital cameras in the US, sued Eastman Kodak Co over alleged use of patented camera technology, as competition in the US$11.6 billion global digital market intensifies.

Kodak, the world's biggest photography company, last month brought claims against Tokyo-based Sony in Rochester, New York, saying Sony Electronics infringed 10 patents issued between 1987 and last year, including ones for image compression and storage in digital cameras.

"It's customized chips and components that differentiate products from the pack, so you're probably going to see more lawsuits in the future," said John Yang, an analyst at Standard & Poor's in Tokyo.

The suit brought by Sony, maker of Cyber-shot digital cameras, is the company's first concerning digital still camera technology. It comes as competition from rivals such as Kodak and Fuji Photo Film Co erodes profit and sales of Japanese-made cameras in North America fall.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worldbiz/archives/2004/04/02/2003116385

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

1. Hard times for Kodak.

Kodak is struggling. Digital cameras are eating into their film profits, and their own digital cameras haven't caught on.

[Not Me]

2. Not their style

As a former Kodak employee, it is unlike them to engage in what the suit suggests. In fact, they generally took a lot of care to research patent files and prior use cases to ensure they are not infringing.
They had a real nasty verdict handed to them in the Polaroid suit that cost 900mil and caused them to leave the instant camera business. To this day, there are still big questions as to why the judge ruled against them.

Kodak does indeed face some big issues in the near term. Not so much that they are late getting into digital--as some analysts would claim. That's not really the case, they have had products for years. The big issue facing them is that they now are not the dominant player...in fact they are only one of many very respected players in the crowded field.

[LosinIt]

3. What I was told was that the critical notebook re: the patent..

could not be found. You're right about patent-phobia. Kodak for years paid the big dollar to have their chemical database kept by Chemical Abstract Service (CAS, the home of CAS registry numbers that you may have seen on the side of spray cans or the like for different chemicals) so that each and every night Kodak chemicals were run against the CAS database. Any matches that were found would indicate that the chemical in question had been mentioned somewhere in the chemical literature. If there was no match then that was the go ahead to research that chemical further because it would be patentable. If there was a match, then the chemist could go to the literature and find out what was known about that chemical. Unfortunately this process was really expensive and they have stopped doing it.