KODAK & SAMSUNG END FEUD WITH CROSS-LICENSING PACT

[Anonymous]

KODAK & SAMSUNG END
FEUD WITH CROSS-LICENSING PACT
Kodak gets royalty
payments from Samsung under digital-imaging licensing deal
Eastman
Kodak Co. said Monday it will draw royalties from South Korea’s Samsung
Electronics Co. under a licensing pact that gives the companies access
to each other’s digital-imaging patents.The agreement ends a
14-month-old patent-infringement dispute that came before the U.S.
International Trade Commission, a federal overseer that can ban imports
of devices made with contested technology.Samsung had already agreed in
December to pay the photography products maker an unspecified amount as
the two sides worked to settle a dispute triggered by technology used in
Samsung’s camera phones. That payment will be credited toward Samsung’s
royalty obligation, the terms of which were not disclosed.

The
companies said they will terminate lawsuits against each other in
federal court in Rochester as well as patent-infringement proceedings
before the trade commission. The deal is subject to approval by the
commission, which is expected to issue a decision before the end of
January.

Kodak has amassed more than 1,000 digital-imaging
patents, and almost all of today’s digital cameras rely on that
technology. The photography pioneer spent $3.4 billion from 2004 through
2007 converting the bulk of its business from high-margin film to
electronic imaging.”We are pleased to have reached a mutually beneficial
arrangement that advances the interests of Kodak and Samsung and which
validates the strength of Kodak’s intellectual property portfolio,” said
Laura Quatela, Kodak’s chief intellectual property officer.

Calls
to Samsung were not immediately returned.
Based in Seoul, Samsung is
the world’s biggest manufacturer of memory chips, liquid crystal
displays and flat screen televisions and ranks second behind Finland’s
Nokia in mobile phones.Kodak alleged in a November 2008 lawsuit that
camera phones imported by both Samsung and LG Electronics violated
various patents that Kodak obtained from 1993 to 2001. Samsung filed its
own complaint with the trade commission in February, saying some Kodak
digital cameras infringed on its technology.

After an
administrative proceeding, a trade commission judge ruled Dec. 17 that
Samsung had infringed two Kodak patents. Within a week, the companies
announced they were negotiating an end to their dispute.Kodak and South
Korea’s LG Electronics negotiated a cross-licensing agreement in
December that will give both broad access to each other’s patents. Kodak
also sold LG its technology for super-thin OLED screens for an
undisclosed price. Organic light-emitting diodes generate light on the
screen’s surface, don’t have to be illuminated from behind and consume
less power than their non-organic LED counterparts.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9531916

[Author]

January 18, 2010 at 10:45 AM