Kodak Sues Apple and Blackberry Maker, RIM

... nokia had some issues with apple, now kodak... who next?

Apple's in trouble
First NOKIA, now KODAK

looks like the new get rich scheme is to buy patents. Looks like I know what my tax return investments are going into.

Successful patent troll is successful.

You have got to love these patent lawsuits. Yeah, let us inhibit progress even more because you expect someone else to pay you for their hard work. I believe that copyrights and patents should last for 15 years, at the absolute max, for technology. There should be a 5 year patent and copyright length, maximum, for medications, but also have that 5 years start after the FDA finishes dragging its damned feet.

No renewals, to tag-backs, do not pass go, you lose the right to claim something as private after a certain length of time when you initially released it to the world. Now, there could be one small exception: Perhaps we could allow for a patent fee past the five or 15 year mark, adding 5 more years. This patent fee could not exceed, let's say, $2USD or something close to that.

We need to work on new products, not continue to rehash the same, old bullshit. There are too many manufacturers that are simply adding small extras, many that should have been in from the start, and essentially attempting to bait customers into purchasing the same product all over again(hello PSP, iPhone, and many others).

Its funny how these lawsuits always come up AFTER the products have made billions of dollars... never before.

Some guy patented using a detachable USB cable on a keyboard. My company has been trying for some time to get around this with no real success. It's ridiculous. We don't even sell keyboards we just want to produce them for our own use and cannot because of this patent. Crap like this should be illegal.

When will it end!??! Oh, yes, that's right, December 21, 2012.

Aye, as said, this is Kodak we're talking about. Looooong time in the camera and lens business for them, so this isn't really some minor issue, or an unused patent. As said in the article, they receive royalties from other phone companies, why should Apple or RIM get away with it?

The patent system needs to die. It's utterly destroying innovation. Just because one dude thought up the idea, that doesn't mean they're the best for the job. In fact, most times other companies can make better use of the patent.

The problem is the way patients are worded and issued. The way the artical reads..
"A second lawsuit, filed with the same court, claims Apple's array of Macs and other devices infringe a separate Kodak patent detailing a method by which one application can call upon other apps to help it complete a task."
...well that describes most app plug-ins. These ideas should not have beeen patients but more along the lines of copywrites. Mostly because Kodak was not the creater of apps to help otehr apps so they shouldn't be able to hold a patient on it, but they can hold the rights for apps that help their app.

Some of you you are utter morons have don't really have any idea what would happen if people couldn't protect their investments.

The system needs reform yes, but the minute you remove the protection, innovation will cease.

Do you know it cost close to a billion to bring a new medicine to market. Now who the hell will spend that kind of money on reseach and testing when a week later someone can copy it and under cut you. Same goes for any tech.

I know most people think of Kodak in relatin to old film camera's, they have a very sucessful digital imaging business - they're also VERY innovative and have a lot of IP in that arena. They have a lot of very high end (military use) imaging tech.

They're definitely NOT patent trolls.

I don't know the details of this case. It might very well be infringing on their patents. On the other hand...

The patent could be so vague as to be "A process for capturing an image with a hand-held electronic device and stored in digital format for later viewing and transfer to another device" which would make any digital camera, video camera with still function, cellular phone with a camera, PMP with a camera, hand-held game system with a camera, etc. Which would be so blatently wide in its coverage that no one could ever make any gadget without infringing.

A patent should have to be absolutely precise in its description. It should have to name the exact details of the cmos sensor and lens configuration, supported resolutions, meathod of storage and conversion of the image to the storage format etc. and only cover that single method. If someone else comes up with a way to do the exact same thing without using any of the EXACT same pieces then they should be able to produce a product without fear of patent cases.

I hop smaller company's who can't afford lawsuits (Palm) takes notice and tries to avoid the suits.

I'm going to patent the process of getting a patent, and then sue everyone who gets a patent afterwards without paying me a fee.

This is a good thing someone who is an expert came out with a good idea and rolled it out to everyone so all phones can be improved instead of holding it and giving it to no one to a few.
this is not surprising nor is it bad. frankly Kodak spent a ton of money developing camera technology so that "Kodak also has licensing deals with Nokia, Sony, Ericsson and Motorola and receives royalties from them in exchange for using the technology." They deserve the royalties and frankly the phone makers wouldn't make their phones unless they could make that money.

They should apply common sense to issuing patents...

Things that are too obvious should not be patentable, like multi touch for touch screens.

I mean how Stupid can you get!?!?!?!?!?!?

Something like that should be seen as almost as obvious as breathing.
Everyone all over the world would come up with that one as a simple part of the way people are:

We almost all have more than 1 finger and will want to operate a user interface with more than 1 finger...

Besides people (like Jeff Han) have been publicly demoing multi touch displays for YEARS and yet that stupidity still went through for Apple to get that patent.

Is this World INSANE!?!?!?!???????

In the same light why not patent a "keyboard" where you can press more than one key at a time LOL

No one has that yet right???

I'm gonna be Rich...
...runs of to apply for patent before Apple thinks of it!

Crazy

The only positive Kodak makes these days is lawsuits. But it is nice to see them sink their teeth into Apple... the king of suing.

Sega owns a patent for having a 3D movable camera in a video game. That would be one massive lawsuit. I guess some companies know what they can fight for, some don't, and some try anyway (like Apple).