“Eastman Kodak Co. is accusing Apple Inc. of trying to shake up a planned patent sale in a bid to avoid paying Kodak more than $1 billion in patent-infringement damages and royalties,” Jacqueline Palank reports for Dow Jones Newswires.
“Kodak says Apple is the biggest infringer of Kodak’s portfolio of digital camera patents, used in Apple’s iPhones and iPads. It is also a potential buyer of those same patents, which are worth as much as $2.6 billion and which Kodak is counting on to pay its creditors,” Palank reports. “As a result, Kodak says Apple’s move to declare ownership of key patents now, years after their development, shows that Apple is out to ‘delay and derail’ Kodak’s patent sale as well as to chip away at the patents’ value.”
Palank reports, “‘Apple’s decision to press its ownership claims now… should be seen for what it is, namely, a ploy calculated to prevent the debtors from using the [bankruptcy] sale process to obtain a fair price for Kodak’s digital capture portfolio (or to enable Apple to buy it on the cheap and extinguish its infringement exposure),’ Kodak said in court papers filed Monday.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hey, if Apple owns the patents, then Apple owns the patents. Ownership would naturally have to be decided before Kodak tries to sell them.