Edible Apple

Well that may be all she wrote for Eastman Kodak as the once mighty photography company was recently on the losing end of  a decision in its patent suit against both Apple and RIM.

This past Friday, the ITC upheld a previous ruling which declared that Apple and RIM products did not infringe upon Kodak’s intellectual property, noting that the patent in question was invalid.

The New York Times reports:

Kodak has been seeking to force Apple and RIM to pay licensing fees and bolster the value of patents Kodak intends to sell. Kodak said in a court filing that Apple owed more than $1 billion in royalties. The dispute has dragged on for about 30 months, almost twice as long as a typical trade commission case.

The patent’s validity “has been upheld in previous litigation at the I.T.C., and was affirmed by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office,” Chris Veronda, a spokesman for Kodak, said in a statement. “We are confident that its validity will ultimately be upheld.”

The patent in the case is in one of two portfolios Kodak is selling, which may be its most valuable assets. One group includes patents for digital-capture technology and the other covers imaging systems and services.

Kodak said it had generated more than $3 billion by licensing the digital-imaging patents to users including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Nokia.

Apple and Kodak’s legal dispute began back in January 2010 when Kodak asserted ownership of a photography patent which saves energy by enabling users to preview an image with a low-res quality version of said image.