Kodak and Matsushita settle patent dispute

After just a few months of legal wrangling, Kodak and Matsushita have settled their patent lawsuit, originally brought by Kodak due to Matsushita's alleged infringement of a number of digital camera-related patents. The two companies have agreed to cross-license each other's patents, but it's not all sharing and cupcakes -- the agreement is "royalty-bearing to Kodak," according to documents filed with the SEC. That was fast -- guess Kodak's new strategy of aggressively enforcing its IP portfolio is working out after all.

[whatishalo? @ Dec 28th 2007 6:03PM]

Does that mean they will bring back the poloroid? Nothing says "in your face technology advancement" like waving that film like an idiot while it processes....

[whatishalo? @ Dec 28th 2007 6:04PM]

...polaroid...

[Dale @ Dec 29th 2007 1:20AM]

And just what does Polaroid have to do with either Kodak or Panasonic?

[Anthony @ Dec 28th 2007 6:41PM]

I, for one, am happy. I want Kodak to succeed. Maybe it's living by a film processing center when I was in college (a classic building that's since been destroyed- & filmed being destroyed), but I hate that the US makes basically nothing these days. You can't import your world & expect things to just go on as before. The only thing we've got these days is intellectual property.

[Trent @ Dec 31st 2007 3:51PM]

There's nothing wrong with subbing out the manufacturing if your the country producing all the innovation and white collar jobs. For the past 50 years that has been what the US has been doing. Everyone complains about the loss of manufacturing jobs but frankly the jobs being lost in general suck. Often they are hazardous, boring and can result in repetitive strain injuries and frankly they don't pay well. There are a few, and I stress a few, manufacturing jobs that are high paid that are being lost, but they are the rare exception. They are replaced by white collar jobs and service jobs. Both of which don't require hazardous work environments and some of the jobs pay quite well.

The problem has been during the Bush administration the majority of the jobs being created are low paying service jobs. Part of this is because of the record unemployment levels, skilled workers are in high demand and some of the white collar jobs are moving overseas because there simply aren't enough qualified
(as in not idiots) Americans to do the work. But even a low paying service job is better than a low paying manufacturing job IMO.