Intellectual Ventures sues Nikon on 5 counts of patent infringement

November 4, 2011 – 4:23 am
Patent

Watch out Nikon, Intellectual Ventures I LLC have you in their sights.

Intellectual Ventures is a private company that also happens to be one of the top five owners of US patents, according to Wikipedia.

Its business model has a focus on developing a large patent portfolio and licensing these patents to companies. Publicly, it states that a major goal is to assist small inventors against corporations. In practice, much of their revenue comes from licensing patents from other corporations and then filing lawsuits for infringement of patents. This, however, is not without controversy.

IV are claiming against Nikon for infringing the following:

  • 6,181,836: “Method and system for non-destructive image editing” by Delean and assigned to MGI Software Corporation. Prosecuted by Blakely, Sokoloff, Taylor & Zafman. Includes 16 claims (4 indep.). Was application 08/933,798. Filed 9/19/1997 & Granted 1/30/2001.
  • 6,121,960: “Touch screen systems and methods” by Carroll et. al. and assigned to ViA, Inc.. Prosecuted by Patterson, Thuente & Skaar, P.A.. Includes 30 claims (3 indep.). Was application 08/919,527. Filed 8/28/1997 & Granted 9/19/2000.
  • 6,979,587: “Image sensor and method for fabricating the same” by Lee and assigned to Hynix Semiconductor Inc.. Prosecuted by Birch, Stewart, Kolasch & Birch, LLP. Includes 10 claims (4 indep.). Was application 10/330,287. Filed 12/30/2002 & Granted 12/27/2005.
  • 6,221,686: “Method of making a semiconductor image sensor” by Drowley et. al. and assigned to Motorola, Inc.. Prosecuted by Huffman; A. Kate. Includes 34 claims (4 indep.). Was application 09/493,366. Filed 1/28/2000 & Granted 4/24/2001.
  • 7,733,368: “Virtual reality camera” by Teo. Prosecuted by Perkins Coie LLP. Includes 22 claims (4 indep.). Was application 11/935,344. Filed 11/5/2007 & Granted 6/8/2010.

According to the complaint , Intellectual Ventures first approached Nikon about licensing these patents in 2008, but Nikon declined to meet with them. They say that a second approach was made in 2011, and that "good faith efforts to negotiate a license" failed.

IV are also suing Canon for two of the above patents, plus others.

[ Via Techdirt ]
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Nikon issues 3rd Notice on the damage from the Thai flood, factory still under water

November 3, 2011 – 11:05 pm

The flooding in Thailand continues, and is having a major negative impact on Nikon's financials with an estimated reduction in sales of 65 billion yen (around $833m). Nikon's press release, with full financial results due later today:

This is to advise you of the latest situations of submersion at Nikon (Thailand) Co., Ltd., a consolidated manufacturing subsidiary of Nikon Corporation in the Rojana Industrial Park in Ayutthaya Province located in Central Thailand.

  1. Damages

    The 1st floor of all buildings at the premises continues to be submerged. Operation of the factory has been suspended since October 6. No human damage is reported. As for the water level, the Rojana Industrial Park, where Nikon (Thailand) Co., Ltd. is located, announces that it has lowered by about 40 centimeters from the highest period at measuring points in the Park.

  2. Estimated impact to our business performance

    The impact of the flood on our business performance for the financial period ending March 31, 2012 has been estimated, within the scope of our current findings and understanding, to push down net sales by 65 billion yen and operational income by 25 billion yen. Our estimation of the financial results for the Year Ending March 31, 2012, announced at 15:00 JST today, has reflected these negative factors.

  3. Recovery

    We have set up support and recovery system under the Emergency Headquarters for Disaster Control headed by president and will endeavor to restart the operation as early as possible. Every possible measure is now under preparation to resume production by means as purchase of new manufacturing equipment, review of production allocation among Nikon group companies, etc. As for drainage from the industrial park, the Rojana Industrial Park authority explained to us that they expect water pumping-out to start in the beginning of November and complete by the end of November.
    We are planning to start production at other Nikon group manufacturing plants and our partner factories in Thailand one after another from December 2011. Production will partially resume from January 2012 at Nikon (Thailand) Co., Ltd., and production of digital SLR and interchangeable lenses will return to the normal level by the end of March 2012.

We deeply apologize you for any inconveniences caused by the disaster such as short supply of our products.

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Zeiss updates Distagon T* 2/25 for Nikon to ZF.2

October 29, 2011 – 4:25 am

Zeiss Distagon T* 2/25

Zeiss have announced an new lens for Nikon F mount, the Distagon T* 2/25 ZF.2.

Although manual focus only, it does include a CPU that reports information back to modern digital bodies, allowing the use of some automatic exposure modes and ensuring EXIF information is correct.

The lens will be available at the end of 2011, and is priced at €1217 (excluding VAT).

Full press release and specs after the break
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Is Nikon interested in buying HP's ailing webOS?

October 27, 2011 – 11:23 am

Nikon heart of the image
HP webOS

There's a rumor that has been doing the rounds recently, and it's a strange one. Fox News reports that Nikon, of all companies, has been talking to HP about buying the latter's ailing webOS operating system.

webOS, for the uninitiated, is the operating system for phones and tablets originally created by Palm and introduced with the Palm Pre cellphone in 2009. Fast forward a couple of years and Palm was swallowed up by HP for a trifling $1.2bn. HP launched a few more devices and a tablet called the Touchpad, then practically killed the platform stone dead by pulling out of the webOS hardware business.

HP TouchPad

The webOS operating system itself lives on officially, though its future has been in doubt since HP rid itself of devices running the OS in a huge firesale.

To quote the article:

Layoff notices are also on hold as HP assesses former CEO Leo Apotheker's decision to shutdown the PC division. Part of that assessment includes WebOS. Sources on the WebOS team say that HP is actively meeting with a number of interested buyers including HTC, LG, Nikon, and Amazon.

So it is just a rumour and will probably come to nothing - but what could Nikon possibly want with a mobile operating system? Sure, todays cameras are rather powerful computers and it would be fascinating to see what could be done if one was running an open OS that supported user-downloadable apps… or perhaps they have something completely different in mind?

Fox News via PetaPixel.

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A Nikon camera Halloween costume… that works

October 25, 2011 – 11:01 am

ZZ7F7F353C

Do you have your Halloween costume sorted? No? Well, Tyler Card does - and it's a huge Nikon DSLR. Correction - a huge, working Nikon DSLR!

Made from cardboard and a bucket fashioned to look (sort of) like a D3, Tyler's costume actually takes photos. It's built around a Nikon consumer DSLR and displays photos on the back via an LCD panel disconnected from an old Dell laptop that runs the rig. It even has something the D3 doesn't, a built-in speedlight!

Full marks for originality, even if it's not constructed quite as solidly as the real thing…

Click through for demo and making-of videos of the costume
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Update on Nikon's flooded factory in Thailand

October 21, 2011 – 1:31 pm

Nikon have published a second notice regarding the status of their factory in Thailand. We understand that this may also have lead to Nikon postponing the announcement of a new model DSLR.

This is to advise you, following our first notice of October 11, of the latest situations of submersion at Nikon (Thailand) Co., Ltd., a consolidated manufacturing subsidiary of Nikon Corporation in the Rojana Industrial Park in Ayutthaya Province located in Central Thailand.

  1. Damages

    The 1st floor of all buildings at the premises are presently submerged and the water level is as high as around 2 meters and there arose no remarkable change since October 12. Operation of the factory has been suspended since October 6. It is reported that there is no human damage.

  2. Estimated impact to our business performance

    We still have difficulty to grasp the overall damages of our equipment and facility since access to the premises continues to be prohibited. We are now continuing our utmost to estimate the impact of the flood to our group companies and business performance. We assure you to immediately advise our findings once it is judged there will be an important change in our forecast.

  3. Recovery

    We are unable to define how soon operation will be resumed. It will take a certain time before the situation normalizes including completion of water pumping out from the Rojana Industrial Park. We have set up support system under the Emergency Headquarters for Disaster Control headed by the president and will endeavor to restart the operation as early as possible. Every possible measure is now under preparation to resume production by means as purchase of new manufacturing equipment, review of production assignment among whole Nikon group companies. As for drainage from the industrial park, we are requesting its acceleration to the Thai government, together with the Rojana Industrial Park authority, other companies in the Park and Japan External Trade Organization.

We deeply apologize you for any inconvenience caused by the disaster such as short supply of our products.

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