Apple, RIM didn’t infringe Kodak patents
Kodak’s hopes to parlay its patent portfolio into a get-out-of-Chapter-11 card have been dealt a blow, with a ruling that Apple and RIM haven’t infringed its digital image preview patents. The patents have been subject of lawsuits in both directions: Apple has accused the moribund icon of “ransacking” its IP to secure the …
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Wow!
"Furthermore, the judge has determined that claim 15 of that patent is invalid on the grounds of obviousness."
A federal judge with a clue! Satan's ice-skating to work tomorrow :-)
Re: Wow!
be careful, you'll have people suggesting he was paid off by the big boys with comments like that :)
cynical lot on here.
You do wonder why they granted it in the first place. What is the alternative to a viewfinder? chimping** after every shot?
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimping
I havent read the patent nor do I care but if the patent was granted in (maybe) the 60's then it might not have been so obvious back then as to nowadays.
If the patent was granted in the 60's
it would have long expired. The earliest this could have been granted was the early 90's
1 billion?
1 billion dollars extra sales were generated just because of that particular feature?
I think not. More fool them.
and another thing
KKodak got a billion for essentially doing FA, and they still manage to go bankrupt . Wow.
on the grounds of obviousness ?
Is the judge even aware that many of the earliest digital cameras did not have any preview screen and that they instead used standard viewfinders? Obvious, not really.
Re: on the grounds of obviousness ?
That's the usual straw man argument against obviousness - just because something is not done does not mean nobody thought of it. It might simply have been too expensive to include an LCD screen at the time.
Re: on the grounds of obviousness ?
It probably WAS too expensive to include an LCD screen at the time. It must also have been to expensive to patent the idea as well. If Kodak have a patent then let them profit by it. How many Apple patents have there been which are, not to put too fine a point on it, bleeding obvious.
Re: on the grounds of obviousness ?
Rounded corners on a rectangle are nothing short of revlutionary and not in any way obvious...
Mine's the one with the sharp cornered tablet in the pocket.
prior art
the viewfinder in my Nikon F1 had rounded corners.
Infringement
"Apple, RIM didn’t infringe Kodak patents"
Well, to be picky, they were found to infringe a claim in the patent (claim 15) - in the case of Apple due to the iPhone 3G and for RIM, all the products in the accusation. The were, however, not found guilty of unfair import practices (19 U.S.C. § 1337(a)(1) see e.g. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/19/1337) a decision which was related to the invalidation of claim 15.
Re: Infringement
Wow - thumbs down for a fact. How very El Reg....
click. click. click. hey, this is a blank roll!
must be a zombie, Kodak is not leaving an image.
Read the actual patent and see for yourself
Link here:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=32&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6292218&OS=6292218&RS=6292218
It seems that this was submitted in 1997, does involve LCD displays, and the judge has no fucking idea what he/she is doing. That much is OBVIOUS
EVERYONE making digital cameras is infringing this patent and many of Kodak's other patents
Re: Read the actual patent and see for yourself
Work for Kodak do you? I'm going to assume that a judge who's job is to judge patent disputes has a clue.
@Dan Paul
Except that in May 1996 Canon announced the PowerShot 600 (with a massive 0.5 megapixels!) that did exactly this.
And, as noted in the actual patent, digital video cameras already used this technique but recorded the image to tape instead of memory; I'd say that makes it an OBVIOUS development, which is why it's been declared invalid.
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