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Apple and Google teaming up to buy Kodak patents

Dec 10, 2012 at 17:44:59 GMT

OTHER NEWS APPLE GOOGLE KODAK

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Financial news service Bloomberg is reporting Apple and Google are working together to purchase some of Kodak's imaging patents. The companies are said to be working together - lending more weight to reports in the Wall Street Journal from back in August. The story suggests the two companies, along with the groups of smaller companies with whom they'd been preparing bids, will offer more than $500m for the patents. Such a figure would give Kodak access to $830m of external funding that is dependent on the value of the patent deal.

Even if this extra line of credit does allow Kodak to emerge from the bankruptcy protection process, the company will no longer include any of its consumer-facing operations, having sold and closed them over the past few months.

Click here to read the report on Bloomberg

Comments

Total comments: 42

You are a rude and disrespectful person !

0 upvotes

I guess this means all of Kodak's film products are going away soon...

Pro Image, Ektar, Portra... to follow Kodachrome... this is sad. I wish Apple or Google can keep them somehow in production.

0 upvotes

Kodak announced a few years ago that they would end film production.
Wheather bankrupt or not, filmproduction would have been ended by now.
Maybe Fuji will be the last one to produce film?
Google and Apple are just interested in technology patents, not to keep on producing film. However sad this me be, it's the reality of today.

0 upvotes

Ahh, must be what Google is doing with the corporation tax money it is cynically avoiding to pay on profits of it's UK operations!

1 upvote

kodak owns the patent for pretty much all of the digital camera technology, the digital sensor, bayer filter.. What is apple and Google going to do with those patents, charge Nikon, canon more or what?

0 upvotes

Just assets of a failed business model. Feel sad for all the people who lost jobs at Kodak.

0 upvotes

$500 million for Kodak’s patent portfolio . They often pay this type of money for a couple of crappy start ups. The word carpetbagger comes to mind.

1 upvote

I tought Apple and Google...maps...
No I dont get it anymore.

0 upvotes

Great. It would have been nice to see Kodak R.I.P. with dignity. Instead, we will now most likely have to witness Apple and Google turn the Kodak name into a mediocre teenage social media novelty. How sad.

6 upvotes

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

2 upvotes

As long as they us these patents for innovation....I think this could be a good thing.

0 upvotes

Google® Tri-X®

Apple® Ektachrome®

iFilm®

iEasyshare®

Google®Brownie®

The Apple-Google® Theater® Hollywood®

7 upvotes

Google tri x sounds good to me!

0 upvotes

This has nothing to do with the film business. Movie film stays with Kodak, the consumer film is going to a new, as yet unannounced, home.

It's unfortunate that the film business is splitting, the reason we have Portra 400 is because of the advances in movie film. <sigh>

0 upvotes

Wow, Apple "buying" patents!
Now this is new!

7 upvotes

Certainly not new: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=apple+nortel

0 upvotes

I think Apple or Google buying patents are quite common.. Many US companies do live with that. But if someone tell you that Samsung willing to pay for patents they used, then it's more like the sun rising from the west.

2 upvotes

iNaccurate, unless you count rectangles with rounded corners and THAT will soon be watered down, or maybe even overturned ....

Samsung buy (and have) real patents.

0 upvotes

I don't think there is any mention of the logo or the company outright, just the patents. This isn't the Motorola deal.

And it's bigger than many of you seem to think. Kodak practically invented digital photography, many of their patents make up the base level of technology. And none of it (digital photography) has passed into the public domain. It is likely that the new owners would be able to collect royalties from just about everyone involved in capturing and displaying photographs.

And let's be honest. If Apple and Google team up to buy them, there aren't many who could outbid them, and given their litigious nature, I suspect the partnership WOULD be smart enough to enforce their patent rights.

Kodak may well end up like Polaroid, but I doubt it will be because of the Apple/Google consortium.

Comment edited 2 minutes after posting

2 upvotes

This is one of the worst sides of patents. Companies acquiring patents in order to collect royalties. This should not be allowed. Its an anomaly.

2 upvotes

What a stupid comment. Are you suggesting NO ONE should own patents? Someone (a person or company) invested time, energy, money into developing an idea or concept and they deserve ownership. If they then want to sell that, it's their right to do so.
Just like copyrights and trademarks.
How about I get to own all the photos you've ever taken, just because I say YOU shouldn't be allowed to owned the art you've created. Think before you mouth off.

2 upvotes

I certainly agree with your sentiments, tirmite, if not the very rude way you expressed them. The problem is the U.S. patent system and the fact that it allows you to patent not only innovative ideas but obvious ideas that have occurred to all of us at one time or another—stuff that can be described as anything but innovation.

2 upvotes

You need a course in reading comprehension tirmite, and the world of IP is far from a simple mine/yours scenario, but that would take patience and depth to understand.

0 upvotes

@tirmite,

You fail at reading comprehension. Roland Karlsson said NOTHING about "NO ONE should own patents".

He clearly said "Companies acquiring patents in order to COLLECT ROYALTIES".

0 upvotes

@tirmite,

You fail at reading comprehension. Roland Karlsson said NOTHING about "NO ONE should own patents".

He clearly said "Companies acquiring patents in order to COLLECT ROYALTIES".

0 upvotes

omg, apple, google.
kodak, rip (2x). at least for film..

0 upvotes

C'mon Apple, bring back the Kodak Instamatic.

1 upvote

Is the legendary product name (Kodak) and logo actually worth anything today?

I can't find any compulsion for these anymore - probably together with lots of (hundred millions) other old film customers...

The only place I still use Kodak products is in my personell historical camera museum. That is of course necessary to explain for my grandchildren how images was recorded in cameras and produced in darkrooms during the old days...

0 upvotes

Well, one day, someone will license the Kodak name and logo to some Chinese company making cheap, mediocre cameras, etc. Just as GE and Polaroid have done. Otherwise no value, except for its patents.

0 upvotes

On the surface consumers never know or understand the value of a company. Unless you are an investor or within an industry 'in the know' most consumers don't know. Kodak has tons of value beyond what you or I will ever see on a shelf or available on the internet. This is true for most companies.

0 upvotes

Those cheap, terrible GE cameras of a few years ago were actually engineered by the GE imaging division and were a real GE product. Built by some Chinese company, probably, but so are Apple products. When I first saw them I also thought they had just sold the name, as they have in the past, but then I looked into it further and realized even a company with the technical resources of GE couldn't just decide to make a better camera and have it be true. A shame, as I'm sure their imaging people make some serious hardware for the military.

0 upvotes

They were not. A fully independent California company simply licensed the name. And by the way, even GE name and legacy is perceived in quite different ways depending on where you live: in Europe, GE means (and only for engineers) large power plants and gas turbines, in North America it probably means (for everybody) home appliances.

http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-reviews/ge/#b

0 upvotes

Apple is the last company I want to see acquiring more patents. They've demonstrated their proclivity for abusing the patent system with their ridiculous suits against Samsung. If they're willing to suppress competition with the trivial design patents they already have there's no telling what they'll do when they get hold of patents with actual substance.

5 upvotes

Apple use and paid for that.. The clock logo using in their new iPad is a recent news. Samsung however want to use but don't like to pay..

0 upvotes

Hence the word trivial.

0 upvotes

I hope it means someone will start manufacturing rear mounted wideangle converters - apparently a Kodak patent that never resulted in any actual product.

It would enable the use of full frame lenses on APS-C cameras with no crop factor. In fact, with the proper converter, it would be possible to use full frame lenses on, say, the Nikon 1 series or other small sensor formats.

Contrary to teleconverters, it would actually gain one or more f-stops, light being concentrated over a smaller area.

3 upvotes

I believe the patent covers focal reducers in systems with a mirror in the light path. Iow, I suppose such converters could be build for mirrorless systems without violating the patent? Seems like such an obvious idea.

1 upvote

Patent vultures! Personally I think patents shall be made void when the owner of the patents go bankruptcy. Patents are for protecting the company's production. The only valid takeover of patents should be if you buy a company to continue the production.

5 upvotes

It's a win win for all parties concerned. Although it also means we'll see the Kodak logo plastered onto even more third party produced crap than it is now, even though the company will officially be out of the consumer market. The Kodak name is still a designer label among the cheap and disposable crowd.

0 upvotes

A patent has nothing to do with seeing the logo. The use of a logo is completely different (a logo falls under Goodwill...not a tangible asset but certainly can be very valuable). There are thousands of patents that are bought and sold every day. Look at it as the sell of a product (tech, design, chemistry formula, etc)

2 upvotes

Kodak end of the life
:-O

0 upvotes

Or at least no more "Kodak moments"...

0 upvotes

Total comments: 42


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