“Eastman Kodak has issued lawsuits against both Apple and Blackberry maker Research in Motion, claiming neither of them has licensed its patents despite using the technology described therein and having been warned about it by Kodak. The photography pioneer said the alleged infringement centred on intellectual property protecting a method for previewing colour images and the processing of images of different resolutions. It filed complaints against both Apple and RIM with the US District Court for Western New York.”
There are valid patents on thumbnails and IPC in 2010?
Here we go again. when will we learn?
Like Nokia, Kodak have developed some great technologies over the years, but also like Nokia they have failed to bring anything to market to really ignite the imagination of the target market. The problem I have with a lot of these patent claims is that they have in many cases developed technologies inspired by some of the great science fiction writers. They weren’t actually original ideas. They rode on the shoulders of other people’s genius and created the hardware to fit the bill, now they are trying to make money off others who really did the same thing but more successfully.
I was thinking of the Nokia / Apple suit the other day and my mind wandered to the concept videos Apple did in 1987’ish of the Knowledge Navigator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Navigator). That “device” included a number of the ideas that are in current production systems, including wireless “internet” access, wireless telephony, a camera, gesture based input and memory card slot, but the technology was nowhere in sight when that video was made. And that’s just one example.
How long are we going to put up with companies making money off other’s hard work by claiming rights to something that they didn’t conceptualise in the first place?
Edited 2010-01-14 23:04 UTC
You mean that who invents time travel should have no recognition because people already though about it?
Not at all, but just say you have an idea, a concept, but don’t have the engineering expertise to make it a reality. You take your idea to a company who have the necessary brains trust and manufacturing prowess to make it a physical reality. Should that company then be able to claim TOTAL rights to both the idea and the execution of the idea?
It’s the chicken and egg scenario to some degree. Would Nokia have created the technology if someone else hadn’t first conceptualised it? Would Apple have created the Knowledge Navigator concept if it wasn’t for the likes of Asimov, Clarke or Roddenberry. You think of the first Motorola flip phone and immediately think of the communicator in the original Star Trek series. This is part of the overall problem with patents, while I can see there is a need for them to exist to protect the individual, in many cases the concepts weren’t in any way original. Unfortunately the whole process is very bureaucratic so logic and truth often take a back seat…
Yet, both Nokia and Kodak *do* have the necessary engineering expertise, in spades (too many people – especially here – seem to forget that Nokia is the largest *global* maker of smartphones – Apple is king only in the US). Their patents are on specific implementations of hardware. Its the software patents that are far more problematic: moving closer to just ‘ideas’ rather than specific physical implementations.
(Although for the record they both, hardware & software patents, can be, and are, abused. I’m not thrilled with the current patent system, but software patents are more abused, by far.)
I’m wondering if Kodak is just following Nokia’s tacit lead on this, and is now ‘piling on’. Apple refused to play with the established big-boys in the hardware world (where cross-licensing is the norm – and as Apple is now learning, really a necessity), and is now paying a price for their arrogance?