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The Courts Government Patents Sun Microsystems The Almighty Buck News

Sun and Kodak Settle Out of Court 201

Posted by CowboyNeal from the dealing-on-the-sly dept.
prostoalex writes "The patent dispute between Eastman Kodak and Sun Microsystems in regards to three patents that EK claimed Sun was violating with Java, came to an end. Thursday afternoon Associated Press announced the companies settled out of court with terms of the deal unclear yet. Before Eastman Kodak was looking for $1.06 billion in damages."
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Sun and Kodak Settle Out of Court More

Sun and Kodak Settle Out of Court

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  • $92M (Score:5, Informative)

    by tao_of_biology ( 666898 ) * <(moc.liamg) (ta) (ygoloib.fo.oat)> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:24PM (#10466323)
    According to news.com.com [com.com], it looks like Kodak is getting $92M out of Sun. Who's next?
    • Who's next?

      Ohhh!! Me me me!!!
      Wait, did you mean who gets sued next, or who gets to drum up a lot of hype for a doomed patent lawsuit, then shake down Sun Micro for $92M in an out-of-court settlement?

      --
      How about cash? [slashdot.org]

    • Re:$92M (Score:5, Interesting)

      by davecb ( 6526 ) * <davecb@spamcop.net> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:56PM (#10466508) Homepage Journal
      Hmmn, in cash, stock or both?

      Getting a large quantity of Sun stock at the current very low price might be a useful move for Kodak. After all, the only time "buy low, sell high" works is when something is thought to be not very valuable.

      Getting about a quarter of Sun's cash on hand might be resisted a lot harder.

      --dave

  • A Sign of Things to Come (Score:3, Interesting)

    by carb ( 611951 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:25PM (#10466329) Homepage
    Should things happen the same way with Microsoft and the hundreds of other "patent-infringers", is now a good time to buy Kodak stock?
  • There's got to be a red-eye joke in there somewhere...

    How about the settlement consisted of 20 million copies of Photoshop Elements?

  • HOW Much?! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by z0ink ( 572154 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:29PM (#10466345)
    How can 3 patents be worth 1.06$ billion dollars? I thought Kodak was in the crapper these days anyway. Would this have been their only means to making any sort of a profit?

    • Re:HOW Much?! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jwind ( 819809 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:33PM (#10466371)
      I think you hit it on the head... Kodak in the crapper? YUP! Kodak and companies alike in the Photo/Film business are trying to grap a piece of the computer (especially software) market in anyway possible. Why? who needs film anymore? Consumer? commercial? nope.

      • Re:HOW Much?! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dnoyeb ( 547705 )
        AFAIK, film and analog media still has better contrast and light capturing than digital.

        • Re:HOW Much?! (Score:5, Informative)

          by jwind ( 819809 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:59PM (#10466519)
          Are we speaking in terms of consumer products? I'm a commercial Photographer and i can gareentee that the Sinare 4x5 digital cameras we have coupled with the Sinar capture software are crisper and more true to the original product than are chromes. There are lots of Skeptics out there i know. We've done tests and test. We resorted to capturing an image (identical) with both Film and digital and printing high quality Kodak Approval Prints for both medias. We let the Clients decide. we haven't shot film in almost a year.
          • Sure, Film grain vs. Resolution.

            So the trade off in image capture media quality is file size vs. file size.

            Certainly it would take more than a 4 - 5 megapixel (current top of the line for the consumer market?) digital image to compete with 70mm film whos target is a movie theater screen. Or how about larger images which you find on billboards, buss stop ads., etc., in the advertising world where its not uncommon to find image files above 30 megabytes, even above 100 megabytes, etc.

            whats common in both me
        • True. But 99% of consumers are not artists and don't give a shit.

        • Re:HOW Much?! (Score:2, Informative)

          by 16K Ram Pack ( 690082 )
          Lord Lichfield (pro photographer who's been shooting for decades and done things like Pirelli calendars) was interviewed on BBC Radio the other day and said that he hasn't shot any film in years.

          If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me.

          I imagine he's using some very high-end equipment, though.

        • true size 35mm CCDs are actually affordable for high-end consumers now ($8k). 4 years ago we were all amazed at high-end 3MP cameras. When an industry disentigrates in a decade, that's extremely rapid change that a massive corporation would have to take head on to survive. Kodak is scared out of their wits because film might not be dead right now, but it's pretty obvious that it has less than 10 years to live in the mainstream.

          Kodak really only has two choices.

          A. Continue doing film, in 10 years when the

      • Re:HOW Much?! (Score:2, Informative)

        by bakawally ( 637407 )
        Who needs film anymore? The movie industy and film students do. Also, anyone interested in professional photography.
        While the market for film is declining its still has a very strong base.

    • Re:HOW Much?! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Citizen of Earth ( 569446 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:57PM (#10466509)
      How can 3 patents be worth 1.06$ billion dollars? I thought Kodak was in the crapper these days anyway. Would this have been their only means to making any sort of a profit?

      A dying company goes on a binge of IP litigation. Why does that sound so familiar?
    • I thought Kodak was in the crapper these days anyway.

      The other [news.com.au] recent [timesonline.co.uk] news [harrowtimes.co.uk] would seem to indicate that.

    • Re:HOW Much?! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
      How can 3 patents be worth 1.06$ billion dollars?

      Kodak has lost more than that by infringing one patent. They were the loser in the largest patent lawsuit the world has ever seen, Polaroid v Kodak.

      Polaroid had a patent on instant film development, yet they waited to file their lawsuit until Kodak had built new factories to build instant cameras, and actually had the product in stores. That way, when the lawsuit finally happened, Kodak was out not only $billion + in damages, but also more billions of in
      • Considering Polaroid's extensive patent portfolio on instant photography and other subjects, Kodak's behavior was a bit like walking into a biker bar and loudly proclaiming that "Only pussies and cowards ride Harleys". They knew they were entering a legal minefield.
        • Kodak's behavior was a bit like walking into a biker bar and loudly proclaiming that "Only pussies and cowards ride Harleys". They knew they were entering a legal minefield.

          Yeah, you'd be surprised how many lawyers own Harleys these days! B-)

      • Polaroid really blew it there.

        With a big name like Kodak marketing their technology, Polaroid would've made massive amounts of money by licensing the patents for royalty fees.

        Instead, Polaroid just sued Kodak and prevented them from selling any instant cameras, relegating Polaroid to a small-time niche-market player.
  • Oh, the agony.

    How could Sun settle? IANAL but it seemed like they would easily win an appeal (in a courthouse anywhere but Rochester).

    And how could the editors post this story without more details about the settlement? What a tease. Now I have to know.

    • Re:Aieee! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cmowire ( 254489 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:32PM (#10466367) Homepage
      They can't afford to take the risk of a $1b judgement. That's why they settled. And the details of the settlement are probably not available for disclosure because it's in neither Sun nor Kodak's best interest to disclose them.

      • Re:Aieee! (Score:3, Informative)

        by WalksOnDirt ( 704461 )
        As public companies, won't the settlement have to be disclosed when they submit their financials?
        • Not always.

          Remember, the AT&T vs. BSD agreement was never completely disclosed. Just because it's a public company doesn't mean that every piece of relevant information about the operations of the company needs to be disclosed to the shareholders.
          • Sure, public companies can keep some things secret, but as far as I know the books have to be open. If any money at all was involved here, like $92M maybe, I don't see how it could be kept off book. Then again, IANACPA.
      • Phase 1: Sue some large company for four quadrillion USD.
        Phase 2: ???
        Phase 3: Profit!

    • Re:Aieee! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cofaboy ( 718205 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @02:10AM (#10467503)
      don't forget that if SUN actually won the case this would become yet another example of how screwed up the patent system is in the US and then potentially threaten SUN's own revenues from patents it has ownership of.

    • Re:Aieee! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by johansalk ( 818687 )


      Sun settled because it believes the majority of its key customers have mission-critical needs and can't tolerate uncertainty at all (the people who buy the sun hardware, software and services).

      This is why Kodak could get away with this blatant extortionism.

    • Re:Aieee! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rpozz ( 249652 )
      How could Sun settle? IANAL but it seemed like they would easily win an appeal (in a courthouse anywhere but Rochester).

      $92 million isn't a lot to avoid a several-year-long ludicrous court case like the one between SCO and IBM.

  • In an ideal world... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DeepHurtn! ( 773713 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:31PM (#10466357)
    ...crap like this would help companies realize how messed up the patent situation in the US is right now. Unfortunately, it will probably only increase their zeal for patents and patent-related lawsuits, so that while they might lose a confrontation like this from time to time, they'll also be able to win some.

    • Re:In an ideal world... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RLiegh ( 247921 ) * on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:33PM (#10466377) Homepage Journal
      I agree with you; instead of people changing the system so that they don't take the losses that sun did, they will instead flood the courts in hopes of making the easy money that kodak made.

      • Re:In an ideal world... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Jahf ( 21968 )
        Yeah, but ok ... Sun lost $92M due to a patent in this case.

        How much does Sun make -because- of patents? Not just in royalties and lawsuits but in implied value?

        Something tells me Sun is happy to have patents stay around.

    • It is not the little wins like this that they are after. They aren't even actually fighting. They are setting up a club with heavy fees that is designed to ensure that open source projects and even small businesses are forced to close their doors. They all win in the end.

  • This is bad. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crankyspice ( 63953 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:31PM (#10466360)
    Settlements have no precedential value, so, the question(s) raised by Kodak's original patent prosecution claim remain... .NET operates in much the same way as Java.

    I'm sure other languages do as well... :\

    • Re:This is bad. (Score:4, Informative)

      by JanusFury ( 452699 ) <kevin...gadd@@@gmail...com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:38PM (#10466409) Homepage Journal
      .NET is apparently safe, as according to the news.com.com article, MS already has a license for Kodak's patents.
      • yes, but mono has not.

        • Re:This is bad. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
          yes, but mono has not

          That could be a very clever attack. When mono was first proposed, naysayers assaulted it: "Don't waste your time! Microsoft will wait until your project works, then reveal patents that make your implementation illegal!". The nascent Mono team responded that Microsoft had promised not to enforce patents against them.

          But now, if Kodak has patents that Mono infringes, they might go shut it down without prodding from Microsoft.

          (Just another sign of why software patents are bad in g

    • Re:This is bad. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ArghBlarg ( 79067 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @01:31AM (#10467369) Homepage
      ... and P-code came before Java (in what, 1983?). It's like a broken record, reading about these stupid patents that have *obvious* prior art to anyone "skilled in the craft", as the patent office used to say. Sun should have stood up to them and slammed them to the wall.
      • >>and P-code came before Java (in what, 1983?).

        Earlier than that. I was writing p-System code in mid-83 and it definitely wasn't version 1. According to this article [threedee.com], the date of version 1.3 of the p-System is August 77.
        • I was fooling around with Apple Pascal in 1981, and that was P-code based, I believe. As I recall (and it's been 23 years so someone correct me if I'm wrong and I'm too tired to Google it) it was a port of UCSD Pascal.
          • Yes, Apple Pascal was a p-system port. My company did its original development on Apple Pascal on an Apple ][. On a 6502! I can't even imagine how slow it was anymore.
            • I never did get into Apple Pascal: I was doing real-time stuff using Apples in 1979 and Pascal was just ungodly slow for that purpose. Not that Applesoft BASIC was any better, performancewise.

              Consequently, I spent several years doing assembler coding on the various Apple ]['s. Still have one somewhere. I still remember the simplicity of the 6502 ... 56 basic opcodes and a dozen or so addressing modes: very RISC-like, actually. I could keep everything in my head and never had to refer to a reference m

  • Sun and Kodak Settle for $92 Million (Score:5, Informative)

    by RavingCow ( 301676 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:34PM (#10466379)
    Groklaw has the story also:
    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20 0410071

  • Invention vs Production (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:34PM (#10466381)
    Invent, patent, don't produce, then sue. Sounds better than 100 hr work weeks bringing a project together...

  • Irony (Score:2)

    by r2q2 ( 50527 )
    Isn't ironic when you link to an out of court settlement and you have it on a place called iwon.com? I know it doesn't really matter that its a AP piece but come on, you guys have a sick sence of humor.

  • Now I'm wondering... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanusFury ( 452699 ) <kevin...gadd@@@gmail...com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:35PM (#10466393) Homepage Journal
    Who else is on the hit list? Microsoft and Sun are out, since MS already apparently has a license for the patents, and Sun just paid them off...

    Is Apple next? They have their own Java implementation, don't they? IBM and Ximian/Novell, perhaps, too? IBM's VM could be infringing, and so could Mono's VM... and that's just sticking in Java-ish territory. Who knows what else they can hit with such a broad patent.

    • Re:Now I'm wondering... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @11:55PM (#10466885)
      The big question is how this will affect various open-source JAVA thingos (like the GNU java GCC compiler thingo)
    • Ximian/Novell - .NET has a patent license from Kodak, but Mono does not.

      I don't think you have to worry about IBM -- nobody wants to get in a patent-war with Big Blue. 'Cept maybe SCO, but they're nutters.

  • Or can such decisions be appealed? I'm guessing that even if an appeal was possible, it's not going to happen now that Sun settled.

  • Thats it then (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Paul Johnson ( 33553 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:39PM (#10466418) Homepage
    These patents (5,206,951, 5,421,012 and 5,226,161) are so basic, they cover large amounts of OO software. According to this decision, Kodak now owns CORBA, COM, large parts of Linux, Apache, and pretty much every other large piece of software ever written.

    According to the Groklaw [groklaw.net] discussion, the jury trial came from a town where Kodak is one of the two main employers. One can only suspect that this may have swayed the jury.

    This is definitely a case for PubPat [pubpat.org] to tackle. There has got to be significant prior art on these patents.

    To anyone thinking of looking, prior art must fulfil the following requirements (IANAL):

    1. It must precede the submission of the patent.
    2. It must be published. Open source should do fine. So should any kind of academic textbook or paper. Closed source doesn't count unless the technique was specifically described in the documentation or some similar published work.
    3. It must be specific. Saying "Unix had this in 1980" doesn't count. Saying "This was described in section 3.4 of Programming Objects in FOO by J Random Academic in 1980" does count.
    4. It must cover the same ground as the claims. Suppose that the candidate prior art had been published today. Would it infringe the patent? If so, then its prior art that invalidates the patent. Otherwise its irrelevant.

      Paul.

    • Re:Thats it then (Score:5, Informative)

      by prostoalex ( 308614 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:46PM (#10466457) Homepage Journal
      These patents (5,206,951, 5,421,012 and 5,226,161) are so basic, they cover large amounts of OO software. According to this decision, Kodak now owns CORBA, COM, large parts of Linux, Apache, and pretty much every other large piece of software ever written.

      That's exactly my thinking. The one filed in 1993 actually describes the virtual machine that manages objects capable of working with different data structures but exposing the same API, which is pretty much any virtual machine out there, and can be extended to the operating system as a whole.

      Kodak's case is strong, since the patents do include the existing OS/VM implementations and describe improvements over existing technologies. Remember: the technology doesn't have to be new to be patented, it just has to extend the technology in a way that's not obvious at the time of filing. That's what I got from my hundreds-dollars-per-hour patent briefing that my employed had for its R&D people.
      • So this means that mono, perl, python, ruby are all violating this patent right?

        I wonder if Kodak will sue Larry wall or Guido. That would be interesting to see.

      • Re:Thats it then (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 )
        Actually it DOES have to be novel (never been done before) as well as nonobvious. The Constitution only allows patents to be granted to the inventor. Except in fairly rare cases, a johnny-come-lately is not the inventor of a particular technology. He's a reinventor. (which is why we don't issue patents for the wheel when people reinvent it)

        Copyrights, OTOH, have no novelty requirement. Independent creation of a work is not infringing, though fairly rare.
    • It's amazing how the hordes of prior art that every slashdotter claims to know about all of a sudden vanishes when the requirments for something to truly be considered prior art are applied.

      Come on people, wheres all the great art you were talking about in the previous thread?
      • I'm not really sure, but I would bet my dollars on Lisp (as previously stated by another post), if nothing else. Of course, when anyone is looking for prior art on software patents, Lisp seems to be one of the first candidates. Now I'm only talking about the patent Kodak sued Sun upon, regarding the virtual machine. Don't really know what difference they make of a VM and an interpreter though.

        I'm not sure exactly what the other patents cover, but another posted mentioned that CORBA might be 'infringing'. I

  • Time to ask Public Patent Foundation to look (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dwheeler ( 321049 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:41PM (#10466426) Homepage Journal
    Time to ask the Public Patent Foundation [pubpat.org] to see if this patent can be overturned because of prior art and obviousness. Sounds like these patents are really good targets for both problems.

  • Non-Compete (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:53PM (#10466497)
    As part of the settlement, Kodak asked they also agree not to go after the film developing business. It seems Kodak wants to keep Sun out of the Darkroom.

    Okay, not really. Just a bad joke.

  • The evil Sun... (Score:2, Informative)

    by dubstar ( 565060 )
    I would think that prior art for this patent would be relatively easy to find, so I'm wondering what the hell Sun is up to.

    This will probably lend credence to the patent claim, so not only does Sun get Kodak off their backs, they probably also get a few lawsuits nicely directed at some of their competitors.. MS with .NET, Novell with Mono.

    'Heres 92 mil, by the way - you may wanna check out THESE particular companies as well.'
    • There are a few things that you have to consider:

      1) The lawsuit was filed in a town where Kodak was one of the major employers, so the jury would almost certainly be biased.

      2) Because of #1, there was a decent chance that Sun would have lost and been forced to pay the $1bn (which is considerably more than 92 million).

      3) If sun faught it, lost, appealed, etc, the cost to them in legal fees and PR would have likely been more than the 92 million that they pain.

      summary? They took the (relatively) cheap opt
      • I believe they are a MAJOR contributor to the community within the Rochester area in terms of charities and such. (The other major employer/contributor being the Wegmans supermarket chain).

        Both companies are loved by the locals because of the benefit they have to the community.
  • When even big corporations cave in on rediculous patents, where does that leave you and me?

    I'd show ya, but goats.cx is no longer online.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @10:06PM (#10466556)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This has become a sad world to live in (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adolfojp ( 730818 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @10:16PM (#10466594)
    It is absolutely sad to see that a company that develops, implements, and pushes forward a field such as computing, and thefore society, can be sued by a company that created a vaguely similar idea that it abandoned because of their lack of vision.


    Cheers... wait, no, no cheers today...

    Adolfo

    PS. I am guilty of abusing the use of run on sentences.

  • Umm.. every program ever written infringes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pavera ( 320634 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @10:18PM (#10466601) Homepage Journal
    First off I haven't read the patents so I don't really know, but from everything I've read about this case, apparently these patents cover the idea of "one program asking another program to do something"... Um, So any program that includes a library, and makes calls against that library, as well as any program that makes system/OS/Windowing environment calls illegal... So, that pretty much covers everything.

    I've never written a program that didn't at least include some basic system libraries, or language libraries. Every program must by necessity "ask for help" from other programs, whether that be the OS or a library. If this is really what this patent covers, they have successfully patented programming.
    • No, they have only patented every OO system with dynamic type lookup and overloaded method calls, or any interpreter that uses dynamic type lookup to resolve overloaded method calls. It's ironic that they targeted Java, since it's got a static type system and can be compiled to native code.

  • Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @10:23PM (#10466634) Homepage
    One of Sun's key arguments in its 'Solaris and JDS are superior to Linux because...' campaign is that Sun's products are indemnified against IP problems, and we can expect to see a Microsoft patent used against Linux in the near future - in a FUD atttack to drive people towards Solaris as 'The only safe choice in x86 *NIX'.

    Microsoft wants all UNIX users corralled up behind a single company so they can then simply drive that company into the ground, instead of having to play 'whack-a-mole' with Linux distributors.

    Sun are taking advantage of this by profiting when they can, but they must realise this is a business strategy that is assuming 'eventual defeat' - Sun are clearly not able to cut a path as an independent technology company, and feel that becoming the 'New Apple to Microsoft' - e.g. expect a Microsoft Virtual PC port with a bundled XP/Longhorn Licence to Solaris x86 soon - is the best way to ensure survival in the short to medium term.

    Clearly, they have no long-term strategy, unless it is to simply cede their server market to Windows NT and fade quietly into oblivion like SCO.

    If the USA doesn't move beyond Windows on the desktop, there are a lot of other countries who will - Software patents as implemented by the US government, are overwhelmingly stupid, and even if every US Linux distributor faces massive taxes, you will have to deal with the fact that Linux is as prevalent, and as easily developed in Europe or India, or Japan, as it is in the US.

    Linux is not going out like this, and this whole 'intellectual property lawsuit' business is just making me, as a programmer, computer user and an educated, open minded person, really angry.

    If companies like Redhat are making money out of selling something they also give away for free, this is largely a result of the groundswell of dissatisfaction with the crap we have had to pay so much money for up till now -

    Make a good product using ethical business practices and provide clear benefits to a supporting community of users, with contracts based on mutual trust, not meaningless stockmarket numbers and the threat of litigation, and people will be interested in buying it, using it and developing it.

    When did 'The network is the computer' get replaced by 'The Microsoft(R) Network (c) Microsoft Corporation 2004 is the computer (pat. pending)'?

  • This is totally gh3y! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gentlewhisper ( 759800 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @11:27PM (#10466703)
    Wow, I can't believe this has happened. Since when is Kodak doing remotely software related?

    I don't even considered them the experts in their supposed field (taking pictures), Fuji film pwns their asses big time (for me).

    Still less software!

    I think patent applicants MUST submit a valid implementation of their "novel ideas" to provide a limit of the scope of just how "ingenious" they are.

    Come on, the industry is really making a big fuss out of their own ingeniuity (stupidity more like!)

    Let's all move to China and India and let these fuck turds sue each other out of business while we just happily develop and develop!

    Hell, even Iraq is better!
    • There was a time when, in order to get a patent application accepted, you had to bring in a working model of your device for the patent office to play with.

      Obviously "working model of your device" is meaningless to patents now though...

  • IBM is next (Score:3, Informative)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @11:32PM (#10466735) Homepage Journal
    MS already has licenses from Kodak, Sun has acquired non-transferable rights, so IBM is next I guess? Is Kodak stupid enough to do that?

    Now what is worse is that a whole bunch of FOSS supporting firms can be pulled to court with this nonsense.

    So is Java lost for the US until 2007? (the pattents were filed in 1987 I believe)

    • Now what is worse is that a whole bunch of FOSS supporting firms can be pulled to court with this nonsense.

      When large companies sue each other, people shrug and say, "well, that's big business for ya.." When large companies sue small companies, especially for bogus reasons, people turn an ear and many get angry. When large companies sue individuals or mom-and-pop businesses or non-profit groups, you've got yourself a major media frenzy. Right now, this software patent garbage is restrained by the fact
  • Let's do the math. The claim is for $1bn. They settle for $92m. My guess is that both sides decided that Kodak has less than 10% chance of winning.

  • riddle me this batman (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kevinx ( 790831 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @01:06AM (#10467278)
    so now if I write a program that infringes on these patents using java as the programming language... am I safe because sun has already paid my licensing fees?

    If that's true then Sun has paid the price for us...making the ultimate sacrifice.

    ...amazing grace how sweet the....
  • They aren't the only tech players with patent portfolios. If they keep sueing deep pockets, they will find a fight. They should remember that they are late adapters to digital photography, and much of the technology they use is patented by other companies.

  • What to do... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Rageon ( 522706 )
    There seems to be a lot of posts that go something like, "this looks like a good patent for XXXXXX to try to fight." While the work these groups do is noble and all, they can't be expected to challenge more than a handful of patents a year. It's not easy work. Not to mention the lawyers hired by Kodak, Sun, MS, etc... are among the best in the world.

    What we need is more of the people right here to step up and do it themselves. How?

    Read this:
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157 0 184224

    Or apply here:
  • As it will encourage companies with bullshit patents to come after legitimate innovators in the software industry. If Sun had stood up for itself, which it apparently doesn't have the cash to do, it would have shown that EK has a crappy patent to begin with.

    GJC
  • Does this kill the chance of an open source java implementation from Sun?
    They settled, but I would guess that the settlement terms did not include "hey Sun, you can write open source versions of our IP"...
  • Use Kodak's Contact Form [kodak.com] to let them what you think. I did:

    As a software developer, I was dismayed to hear about Kodak's decision to sue Sun based upon some bogus software patients. Most software developers think these kinds of patents are causing great harm to the American software developer. Any new feature (even obvious ideas) added to a piece of code could potentially be infringing on someone's intentionally vague software patient. I just read the 3 patents which Kodak has accused Sun of violating.
  • ...are engaged in litigation?

    Who cares.

    Kodak lost the imaging business because they failed to latch onto digital early enough, believing film would prevail.

    Sun lost the server business because they failed to latch onto Free / Open Source Software early enough, believing SunOS would prevail.

    It's like two dying hippos head-butting each other. Fun to watch, but mostly irrelevant.

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