Kodak wins lawsuit against Sun, seeks $1 billion dollars in damages

[mtwhite]

<p><a

href="http://www.rochesterdandc.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041002/BUSINESS/410020333&SearchID=73185676035359">Link

here.</a>

<p>The news article itself is about software patents, and not

photography, but

if Kodak can collect the damages it could give them a nice warchest

to play with.

[tom_menegatos]

Hard to believe they even won considering the patent might be invalid due to prior art based on what little I know about the patent. If the patent preceds shared libraries and COM they might have a chance.

 

Even if the patent doesn't get invalidated, no way are they going to get anywhere near $1b. That's half the operating profit of the sales of their servers for the time in which the patent was in effect. Kodak's patent probably only covers a portion of what java is to begin with. They may get a couple of hundred million at most, if anything, in my opinion.

 

Also, buying a company and using it's patents to sue technology that's been around for almost a decade doesn't win you many friends in the software world.

[grizzlymarmot]

"It's finally nice to see the ball rolling after everyone went through a sea of negatives,"

Hayes said.

 

 

Aren't "negatives" a good thing for Kodak?

[bob_shop]

They can use the money to change the name of their remaining films every couple of months.

[tom_menegatos]

My favorite was this in a pre trial article "A verdict in Kodak's favor has the potential to be enormous. The company is asking for more than $1 billion in back royalties and other damages ? the equivalent of selling 400 million rolls of film at $2.50 apiece."

<p>

400 million rolls, isn't that the amount of film sales being lost to fuji and digital every year?

[__stu_evans]

Maybe they could halt the shortfall by inventing an instant film.

[markci]

Heh -- that's funny. If they get the whole billion it'll be roughly the amount they lost to Polaroid ($873 million) 18 years ago. Without interest, of course.

[bill_tuthill]

Yesterday Kodak and SunW settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

[madwand]

From The Register:<p>

 

<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/07/kodak_sun_settle/">Sun settles Java spat with Kodak for $92m</a>