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back to article 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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  1. jake Silver badge

    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 :-)

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    1. Danny 14
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      Trollface

      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.

      2 1
  2. Giles Jones Gold badge

    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

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    1. Danny 14
      Reply Icon

      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.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        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

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  3. peter 45
    Facepalm

    1 billion?

    1 billion dollars extra sales were generated just because of that particular feature?

    I think not. More fool them.

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  4. peter 45
    FAIL

    and another thing

    KKodak got a billion for essentially doing FA, and they still manage to go bankrupt . Wow.

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  5. banjomike
    WTF?

    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.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      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.

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      1. banjomike
        Reply Icon
        WTF?

        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.

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        1. thomaskwscott
          Reply Icon
          Coat

          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.

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          1. swschrad
            Reply Icon

            prior art

            the viewfinder in my Nikon F1 had rounded corners.

            1 1
  6. Tim Parker

    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.

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    1. Tim Parker
      Reply Icon

      Re: Infringement

      Wow - thumbs down for a fact. How very El Reg....

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  7. swschrad
    Holmes

    click. click. click. hey, this is a blank roll!

    must be a zombie, Kodak is not leaving an image.

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  8. Dan Paul
    Boffin

    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

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      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.

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    2. chr0m4t1c
      Reply Icon

      @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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