A judge at the US International Trade Commission (ITC) has ruled that a Kodak patent being used in a complaint against Apple and Research in Motion (RIM) is invalid, according to a statement from Kodak.
The ITC judge’s ruling is preliminary but found that while both Apple’s iPhone 3G and some Blackberry devices infringe on the patent in question, the patent itself is invalid. The infringement ruling doesn’t do Kodak any favours with the simultaneous invalidation of the patent, which deals with previewing an image on an LCD screen once an image has been taken.
Kodak intends to ask the ITC for a full ruling on the matter and is expecting a decision by 21 September. The company hopes to bolster ailing finances by selling off some of its IP, among them over 1000 patents related to digital imaging.
Source: PC World