Kodak Wins $1 Billion Java Lawsuit

nberardi writes "The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle is reporting that Eastman Kodak Company has just won a patent suit against Sun on the Java Language. According to the article Kodak owns a patent which describes a way for a piece of software to "ask for help" from another application. What they are claiming is that Sun violates this patent when Java byte code uses the Java engine to run the code. This may really upset the industry, because not only Sun uses this technology for Java but Microsoft uses this technology in .Net."

WTF? Kodak?! The camera people?

And people laugh at me when I say the stock market is nothing but a legalized casino.

Re:WTF? Kodak?! The camera people?

Sure, the camera people. Their native market - chemicals, film, film cameras - is gradually dying due to advances in technology elsewhere, and so they plan to sue themselves right back into the game. Sound like a familiar plan?

Re:WTF? Kodak?! The camera people?

Soon we'll be calling every patent lawsuit a "Kodak moment"

Re:WTF? Kodak?! The camera people?

Why not? Kodak is a huge international corporation, and usually such corps have massive and overreaching research arms. Quite a few companies have patents well outside their normal scope. IBM has pharmaceutical orientated patents, yet its doubtful you are going to see them produce medicines any day soon. What was a telephone company doing developing UNIX? Why does Boeing own patents on bridgebuilding? Its not wierd when you think about it.

Re:WTF? Kodak?! The camera people?

Perhaps this will help explain how Kodak came across these patents. From Boston Business Journal [bizjournals.com]:

Three patents once registered to Lowell minicomputer-maker Wang Laboratories could cost Sun Microsystems Inc. $1 billion, following a jury verdict Friday afternoon in Rochester, N.Y.

Jurors ruled that Sun's Java web software infringes the patents, which were acquired by Eastman Kodak Co. in 1997, first reported Friday afternoon in the Rochester Business Journal. The same jury will assign damages, with Kodak asking for $1 billion.

Who's next, IBM?

Dating back from OS/360 and possibly before, user program "asks for help" from the OS so that they could run.

Oh wait, that's prior art =)

Groklaw analysis

PJ has an excellent analysis [groklaw.net] of this case and what software pantents mean for the industry [fatherryan.org] over at Groklaw [groklaw.net] this morning.

Re:Groklaw analysis

"PJ has an excellent analysis [groklaw.net] of this case and what software pantents mean for the industry [fatherryan.org] over at Groklaw [groklaw.net] this morning."

Oh, I can tell you what it means to the software industry, in a single sentence.

It means that ANYONE who dares to write a successful piece of software will be SCREWED as long as patents are allowed to be filed with ambiguous language and meanings that are open to interpretation.

That's, like, all interpreted byte-coded languages

Python, most modern basics (GFA, QBasic, ...), Perl,...

Shall I write the check to Kodak or Eastman-Kodak sir? Cuz I have a script to hack on the server tonite.

sheesh...

Oh my God

Forget Sun, this is batshit nuts. Bytecode interpreters have been common since Smalltalk in the 70s and are used by a simply huge number of common progrmaming languages.

Does anyone have the patent in question? Can this be appealed?

Re:Oh my God

The patents are 5,206,951 [uspto.gov], 5,421,012 [uspto.gov] and 5,226,161 [uspto.gov]

Only the lawyers win...

"Kodak praised the verdict and said it was part of an aggressive push to convert innovations -- both homegrown and purchased -- into real money. The company over the past several years has been issuing licenses, filing lawsuits, forming spinoff companies and finding other uses for its technologies."

It seems that today, companies don't produce products, they produce lawsuits, and that's how they get their money. How long can this continue?

Furthermore, since 1.06B is about 1/3 of Sun's cash on hand (here [yahoo.com]), what will that mean for Sun? It's 7% of their total value, so this can't be good for them.

In the end, it's only the lawyers who win.

Misleading title

The article text says the dollar amount hasn't been decided yet and Sun is probably going to appeal anyway.

What will it take?!

First the Eolas lawsuit, now this. What is going to take for Bill Gates to wake up and say that suing OpenOffice developers isn't worth being able to lose $1.06B to a company that actually has the legal resources to wage a protracted war with Microsoft? If Sun loses this, the Microsoft had better be willing to settle in a very generous was or Kodak will go after them. $1.06B for Sun, since Microsoft has much, much more money it could just as easily be $5B from Microsoft.

This is all starting to become like nuclear weapons in and after the cold war. First it seemed like no big deal, hell it was even a requirement to be a big player to have nukes. Now all these little players are getting them, and Eolas and Kodak IMO are no different or better than the rogue states getting their own arsenals of nukes. Now the big boys are getting attacked so, what do they do? Disarm by pushing for the elimination of all software and business method patents, to keep these guys from having legal nukes to use against them, or do they just pray that not enough ankle biters will get enough patents to bankrupt them in independent and coordinated lawsuits?

Did NOT win $1 billion

It was only decided that Sun had infringed on Kodak's patent. Kodak will return to court and they're initial claim of damages is $1 billion. So it's only a worst-case that Kodak would end up with that much, they'll most likely get less.

However, this still leaves that fact that, unless an appeal overturns this ruling, Sun will need to pay Kodak something for every java product out there. Wow is the patent office messed up... anybody think of some prior art out there?

-Fatty

My letter to Eastman Kodak Corporate HQ

I am a software developer and amateur photography enthusiast, and I have recently learned about Kodak's patent infringement suit against Sun Microsystems. It is a shame that companies with failing business models consistently try to earn money through litigation rather than production and innovation. I realize that the proliferation of digital photography has caused hardship for the Eastman Kodak Company, but the use of this vague and overbroad patent against the software industry is unconscionable. As a direct result of this litigation, I will never again purchase another Kodak product, and I will encourage my family and colleagues to do the same. Malicious litigation is not an acceptable substitute for honest business.

Where to send your letter

Feel free to use/adapt my letter (in the parent post). Here's where to send your letter:

Eastman Kodak Company
Attn: Corporate Information
343 State Street
Rochester, New York 14650

There are probably other reasons to boycott Kodak besides the fact that they pulled a SCRambus--such as their offshoring.

What the hell?

I saw the headline, and do you know what my first reaction was? It wasn't "grrr. Stupid software patents". That came later. My very FIRST reaction was to look for the foot. Because obviously Kodak pursuing software patent claims is absurd. No foot, so I read the article.

I'm not a patent lawyer, and I have better things to do with my time than try to decipher the deliberately-obfuscated language of a patent the article doesn't bother to mention. However, I do know a little bit about computers, and that patent better be a damn sight more specific than "ask for help".

Because I'll bet system calls predate whatever patent Kodak's waving around.

I'm still looking for that foot, only now I want one to kick Kodak in the head.

Years of appeals ahead

Although I know its offical /. policy that everyone should run around in circles yelling its the end of the world everytime a software patent is infringed, this particular dispute is far from over and probably faces 5+ years of appeals before any money changes hands or any technology is changed or restricted.

First, after damages are decided, Sun will move with JNOV (asking the judge to set aside the verdict because there was insufficent evidence to support to verdict). There is probably a 10% probability of this happening in any given case, even more when there is alot of money at risk.

Second, Sun will appeal to the Federal Circuit, which usually overturnes 60% of district court decisions because district courts usually dont know anything about technology and know even less about patent law.

So, IMHO, its too early to start running around in circles over this decision, at least until the Federal Circuit affirms.

Re:Years of appeals ahead

Although I know its offical /. policy that everyone should run around in circles yelling its the end of the world everytime a software patent is infringed, this particular dispute is far from over and probably faces 5+ years of appeals before any money changes hands or any technology is changed or restricted.

I don't know about you, but for me it is upsetting enough that any court upheld this patent at all. So what that appeals can go for another 5 years ? What small business can afford that ?

Grand Jury

It's about time we took "trial by peers" seriously. How many people on that jury could even set the time on a VCR?

Software parents will likely continue like this while being technically literate is a negative for being a judge, and being literate in anything is likely to have you removed from a jury. It's high time that juries in specialist trials were recruited from (perhaps retired) people with skills from the appropriate areas - yes, and paid - so that the arguments could be properly understood.

Links to the relevant patents

I always prefer to get my info from primary sources rather than some newspaper's rendition, so here are the actual patents involved:

Patent 5,206,951: [uspto.gov] Integration of data between typed objects by mutual, direct invocation between object managers corresponding to object types

Patent 5,421,012: [uspto.gov] Multitasking computer system for integrating the operation of different application programs which manipulate data objects of different types

Patent 5,226,161: [uspto.gov] Integration of data between typed data structures by mutual direct invocation between data managers corresponding to data types

Thanks to Artur Biesiadowski, who orignally posted these at Java Lobby.

I haven't had a chance to read them in detail yet; they're slow reading. '012 seems to be the broadest, and it's very, very long. They seem actually to patent object-oriented programming, but they reference the Smalltalk documentation so presumably they're patenting some enhancement. I've been unable to determine what that enhancement is over Smalltalk, so I can't say if Java infringes on it or not.

A note on reading patents: the title is worthless, so please don't write about "I did X in 1967" based solely on the title. The abstract is hardly better, though my quick scan of these indicates that the abstract does actually do a good job of summarizing. The only thing with legal force is the claims, but they're written in a specialized patent language that takes a bit of practice to interpret.

You can usually learn the most from reading the description section, with background and summary, which has less legal force than the claims but is written in something closer to plain English (or at least computer-ese, which you probably speak if you're reading /.)

It's not about bytecode, is it?

As far as I can make out, the patents are about ORBs (object request brokers) in middleware.
And the patents were filed just a few months before CORBA 1.0 was released.

So I think the lawsuit is not about the use of bytecode interpreters/compilers. It is about the middleware mechanisms provided by Java.

Re:Kodak vs. Java

Unbelievable. I'm not completely opposed to software patents but this sure is a great example against them.

Makes me wonder about PCode, back in the day, ages ago when we compiled UCSD Pascal down to pcode and ran it on what amounted to a virtual machine. That was like 1980.

Re:Patent #'s

5,206,951 [uspto.gov], 5,226,161 [uspto.gov], and 5,421,012 [uspto.gov], filed in 1991, 1992 and 1993 respectively. The second one they've "disclaimed" the portion of the term after April 27, 2010.

I don't see how Smalltalk isn't direct prior art for this, at least as it would apply to Java. These are, I believe, a good example of bad software patents that are becoming more and more common. You can't really figure out what exactly they're claiming, you have no idea what might infringe on it, it's so vague that you can't figure out what prior art might invalidate it, and once you do figure it out, you say "you can patent that?". It's like patenting "Ok, take an automobile, turn right and go around the block THREE times, not just TWO times like everyone has done in the past, THEN turn right on red without waiting for pedestrians." And then claiming that airplanes landing between 2AM and 3AM at airports without lights infringes on it, since they never wait for pedestrians, and they have a red light on the wing.

What hangs on a wall, is green, and whistles?
I give up. What hangs on a wall, is green, and whistles?
A HERRING!
A herring? It doesn't hang on a wall!
Well, you can put in a nail and hang it.
Ok, but it isn't green!
You can paint it green.
Ok, but whistles?
Oh, I just put that in to make it hard!