Bloomberg reports that Eastman Kodak has achieved a victory with an initial ruling from a U.S. International Trade Commission judge stating that the company has not infringed two Apple patents cited in a lawsuit filed last year. That lawsuit by Apple was initiated in response to a patent lawsuit by Kodak filed several months earlier.
Neither of the two patents in Apple's case before the ITC were being infringed, and one of the patents is invalid, Judge Robert Rogers in Washington said yesterday. The judge's findings are subject to review by the six-member ITC, which has the power to block imports of products that infringe U.S. patents.
A similar initial determination in Kodak's case against Apple and Research in Motion ruled against Kodak in January, but the broader ITC panel decided to reexamine the case, breathing new life into Kodak's efforts to extract as much as $1 billion in licensing fees from Apple and Research in Motion.
Top Rated Comments
I know this legal stuff involves a lot of give and take and there's never a total winner, but surely Kodak's got the upper hand in this particular fight, yeah?
Or for once they could just pay people for inventing stuff.
You mean the cash stockpile they have that's overseas and don't want to spend because of taxes?
Apple lost their counter-suit and now one of their patents have been found to be invalid. This is actually bad news for Apple regarding this patent suit.
Great post.. only... if Apple had won - I guarantee you'd be singing another tune, right?
Predictable post from predictable posters.
Really? Bill Gates did that and the world called him a sonofabitch. Jobs do it and it's a stroke of genius?
It's called patent-trolling. Enough companies already doing that. Apple should just concentrate on making functional, cool-looking devices.