Kodak, Leading Innovator of Camera Technology, Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

January 19, 2012

Eastman Kodak Co., the company that George Eastman founded and led to innovations in photography and imaging, issued a statement Jan. 19 announcing that it is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

As noted in an earlier story, Kodak had stated in November that it expected proceeds from the future sale of digital imaging patents to “materially increase” its cash balance. “The business reorganization is intended to bolster liquidity in the U.S. and abroad, monetize non-strategic intellectual property, fairly resolve legacy liabilities, and enable the Company to focus on its most valuable business lines. The Company has made pioneering investments in digital and materials deposition technologies in recent years, generating approximately 75% of its revenue from digital businesses in 2011,” the company said in the Jan. 19 announcement.

“Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation,” said Antonio M. Perez, Kodak chairman and CEO. “At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003. Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core IP assets. We look forward to working with our stakeholders to emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company.”

“Chapter 11 gives us the best opportunities to maximize the value in two critical parts of our technology portfolio:  our digital capture patents, which are essential for a wide range of mobile and other consumer electronic devices that capture digital images and have generated over $3 billion of licensing revenues since 2003; and our breakthrough printing and deposition technologies, which give Kodak a competitive advantage in our growing digital businesses,” Perez added.

Just yesterday, Kodak issued a statement announcing its filing of a patent infringement suit against Samsung over the following digital imaging patents:

• • U.S. Patent No. 6,292,218 – “Electronic Camera For Initiating Capture of Still Images While Previewing Motion Images”
• • U.S. Patent No. 7,210,161 – “Automatically Transmitting Images from an Electronic Camera to a Service Provider Using a Network Configuration File”
• • U.S. Patent No. 7,742,084 – “Network Configuration File for Automatically Transmitting Images from an Electronic Still Camera”
• • U.S. Patent No. 7,453,605 – “Capturing Digital Images to be Transferred to an E-Mail Address”