January 12, 2010 - Eastman Kodak Co. announced yesterday that they have signed a patent licensing agreement with Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea.
The settlement ends 14 months of patent infringement lawsuits that the companies had filed against each other, as well as patent infringement proceedings before the International Trade Commission.
Kodak's 2008 lawsuit against Samsung alleged that camera phones imported by Samsung violated some of Kodak's many patents. With over 1,000 patents on digital imaging technology, almost all of today's digital cameras use some aspect of Kodak's patented technology.
Samsung filed a patent infringement complaint of its own with the ITC in February 2009, claiming that Kodak's digital cameras infringed some of its patents. However, a trade commission judge ruled Dec. 17 that Samsung had infringed two Kodak patents. That jumpstarted negotiations between the two companies, and they reached a cross-licensing agreement in December.