The Eastman Kodak Company has all but lost their patent infringement case against Apple over the image preview used in iOS today after an ITC judge dismissed Kodak’s claims.
The dispute centers around Kodak’s claim to a method in which a camera can allow users to preview a low-resolution version of a scene in real time even as they are taking higher resolution still snaps of that same scene.
Sound familiar? It should. When you load up your iPhone’s camera app, this is exactly what happens: you’re given a real-time preview of what your camera is pointing at, but when you click the shutter button, a higher-resolution image is stored to your handset’s internal memory.
Unfortunately for Kodak, Judge Paul Luckern didn’t agree that Apple’s iOS camera feature violated Kodak’s patent.
His findings are subject to a six person review board for final approval, but things look bleak for Kodak, which is playing something of a patent troll right now as it tries to leverage its library of a thousand digital-imaging patents into licenses and lawsuits that will fund some new in-house digital photography projects in what the beleaguered American camera company hopes will be a return to relevancy. In fact, that strategy seems to have backfired entirely, with Apple now launching its own patent-infringement complaint against ITC, which is set to begin trial on January 31st.
[via dismissed Kodak’s claims.
The dispute centers around Kodak’s claim to a method in which a camera can allow users to preview a low-resolution version of a scene in real time even as they are taking higher resolution still snaps of that same scene.
Sound familiar? It should. When you load up your iPhone’s camera app, this is exactly what happens: you’re given a real-time preview of what your camera is pointing at, but when you click the shutter button, a higher-resolution image is stored to your handset’s internal memory.
Unfortunately for Kodak, Judge Paul Luckern didn’t agree that Apple’s iOS camera feature violated Kodak’s patent.
His findings are subject to a six person review board for final approval, but things look bleak for Kodak, which is playing something of a patent troll right now as it tries to leverage its library of a thousand digital-imaging patents into licenses and lawsuits that will fund some new in-house digital photography projects in what the beleaguered American camera company hopes will be a return to relevancy. In fact, that strategy seems to have backfired entirely, with Apple now launching its own patent-infringement complaint against ITC, which is set to begin trial on January 31st.
[via 9to5Mac]
