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Philips sues Kodak over patent infringement
It's been a mixed day over at Philips: on the one hand, they had the pleasure of announcing a new offspring, Liquavista, but now they've been forced to air some dirty laundry concerning fellow consumer electronics manufacturer Kodak, taking the NY-based company to court for allegedly infringing upon a sixteen-year-old patent. Philips claims that while several digital camera manufacturers license the JPEG compression technology protected by patent number 4,901,075 (refer to the schematic above for all of the technical details), Kodak refuses to do so, even though many of their products supposedly take advantage of the "Huffman codeword" magic outlined within. Financial details of the suit have not been made public, but Kodak doesn't sound like it's going to budge, saying that it will defend itself "vigorously."[Via Reuters]
Kodak's Bluetooth camera module
We're not entirely sure of the purpose here, but Kodak filed with the FCC for a Bluetooth camera module that "is to be installed only by the professionals and used only with any product produced by Kodak." Yes, this thing's internal -- normally they'd just file for a camera with the radio, but this isn't the camera, this is the component. See why we're a little confused? So unless Kodak's going to start offering Bluetooth upgrades for their point-and-shoot cameras (which would arguably cost in parts and labor more than the camera itself), it's dubious this is anything more than a proof-of-concept for future, yet unearthed-in-the-FCC cameras, like the one in which the device appears to be implanted (that dual-lenser that sure as hell aint a V570, that much we can tell you).[Via MobileWhack]
