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United States ITC to Investigate Blackberry and iPhone Makers

The camera maker Kodak has announced that it is going to be suing both Apple and RIM (Research in Motion) who are the makers of the popular iPhone (Apple) and the Blackberry (RIM). The suit will be over the technology that is used in their handsets.
Kodak launched a complaint with the United States ITC (International Trade Commission). The allegation stems from the technology that is used for the previewing of pictures that the Blackberry and iPhone are using claiming that it is infringement on patents that are owned by Kodak.
There are actually two separate suits that were filed against Apple. The suits claim that Apple is infringing on patents in two separate ways. The first is that they are violating the patent relating to cameras (digital) and the second that it is violating the patent with particular computer related processes.
Kodak is requesting that the ITC bars both Apple and Research in Motion from shipping the phones and additionally has asked for monetary damages but the sum asked for was not disclosed.
At this time both Apple and Research in Motion are declining comments.
The Legal Scrutiny
Laura Quatela, who is the Chief Intellectual Property Officer with Kodak, had the following to say, “We’ve had discussions for years with both companies in an attempt to resolve this issue amicably, and we have not been able to reach a satisfactory agreement.”
She goes on to say that, “In light of that, we are taking this action to ensure that we protect the interests of our shareholders and the existing licensees of our technology.”
The patent that is the focus of this dispute of the picture viewing technology by Kodak was already the subject of one prior dispute. The prior dispute was brought before the ITC and on December 17th, 2009, the ITC judge had ruled that the camera enabled phones that were made by Samsung had infringed on the patent owned by Kodak. Kodak of course hopes for a similar ruling in the cases brought before the ITC again.
The filing that was done separately against Apply was also scrutinized in a court case that was brought against Sun Microsystems. In this specific case the ruling reached by a federal jury was that the Sun Microsystems java programming technology infringed upon Kodak’s patents. Sun then later agreed to pay Kodak a sum in return for being able to get a license for the specific patents at issue from the suit/ruling.
Apple is additionally currently embroiled in a suit with the phone giant Nokia as well. Last October Nokia alleged that Apple’s iPhone infringed on 10 of the fundamental patents that relate to their wireless technologies. Apple then countersued in December accusing Nokia of copying their technology. Since Nokia complained to the ITC and then launched a further legal action that now alleges that virtually all of the Apple product line infringes on its patents.
No decisions have been made on any of the cases thus far. It should be interesting to see where these legal battles land. Should Kodak or even Nokia win their lawsuits it really could change the landscape of the market we see today.

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Tags: Blackberry, rim

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 5:01 pm by Matt Heman and is filed under Blackberry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.