Kodak wants $1 billion Java damages from Sun
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LOCAL NEWSPAPER The Democrat and Chronicle reports that Kodak will demand $1 billion in damages from Sun Microsystems in a landmark case over Java.
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Eastman Kodak Co., poised to ask for more than $1 billion in damages from Sun Microsystems Inc., has reached an out-of-court settlement in a long-running patent dispute over the Silicon Valley company&#39;s Java programming language.
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Software giant's deal with Sun has raised some questions.
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As we reported previously, Kodak filed a lawsuit against Sun Microsystems claiming that the company had infringed on its patents by implementing &quot;ask for help&quot; functionality in its Java programming language, which gave a huge boost to the company&#39;s yearly
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. senator has called for the U.S. government to cancel an ongoing purchasing contract with Sun Microsystems Inc., but the company says Senator Chuck Grassley's request is based on bad information. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has repeatedly criticized Sun for allegedly overcharging government agencies while on a government-wide purchasing schedule at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) called a multiple award contract. The GSA's inspector general has accused Sun of overcharging government agencies by more than US$25 million in contracts dating back to June 1997. Grassley, in a letter to the GSA last Friday, asked the agency to cancel Sun's contract. Grassley accused the company of not complying with information requests from the GSA's contracting officer and inspector general. The information was necessary for an audit requested by Grassley, the senator said. "I do not understand why Sun would refuse to cooperate fully with this audit," Grassley wrote to GSA Administrator Lurita Doan. "Why is Sun apparently afraid to open its books for inspection? It makes me wonder: Does Sun have something to hide?" Sun, in a statement released late Monday, said Grassley is "misled" about the company's cooperation with inspectors. The company has responded to "multiple demands" from the inspector general and other agencies, the company said. "Ironically, in the same week the senator accused us of not producing sufficient information [inspector general] officials canceled a meeting to discuss these matters because our document production was so voluminous that they needed additional time to review," Sun said. "We have produced tens of thousands of documents, plus transactional data covering billions of dollars in sales, while being subjected to deadlines that appear to be designed to ensure the demands cannot be met." The questions about Sun's contracts surfaced in September 2004, when the GSA Office of Inspector General received a hotline complaint about the company's pricing, according to March congressional testimony from Inspector General Brian Miller. In July 2005, the GSA told Sun resellers the agency was cancelling Sun's contract, because the company was allegedly charging government customers more than some commercial customers. But Sun avoided a cancellation by agreeing to drop some prices. Sun remains a defendant inÂ an Arkansas lawsuit alleging a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme involving IT vendors'Â work on numerous U.S. government contracts. Sun has accused the GSA's Miller of being biased and prejudiced against the company. Part of the problem, the company says, stems from a conflict between Doan and Miller after Doan questioned the inspector general's auditing tactics. Miller has defended his actions, saying he's doing his job. "The president and Congress sent me here to GSA to root out fraud, waste and abuse and to ensure that GSA programs are run with efficiency, economy, and effectiveness," he said in his March testimony. Doan in August 2005 rushed to keep Sun on the GSA contract even though there were continuing questions about the company's pricing, Miller said in his testimony. Doan was worried GSA's IT contracting division "could be destroyed" without Sun participating, he said. Grassley, in his Friday letter, called on the GSA to give Sun 30 days to comply with audit requests and cancel the contract if the company did not comply. The GSA should follow the lead of its inspector general, who has called for Sun's contract to be cancelled, Grassley said. But Sun, in its statement, said Miller's reports on its contracts "are riddled with inaccuracies and conspicuous omissions of multiple know facts." Grassley and Miller have not attempted to compare Sun's contract to contracts by other IT vendors, the company said. "The only party who would be hurt by a cancellation of the Sun GSA contract is the American taxpayer," Sun said. "Our pricing is very often better than our competitors, and the contract offers the government extremely aggressive discounts and contractual protections." Â
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(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems and Unisys have jointly filed a lawsuit against several major computer memory chip makers seeking compensation for alleged price fixing. The two computer makers individually filed lawsuits against the companies earlier this year but have now brought the cases together in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, according to a Friday court filing. The complaint names South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor, Infineon Technologies of Germany, Japan's Elpida Memory and Mitsubishi Electric, Taiwan's Mosel Vitelic and Nanya Technology, and U.S. and European units of some of the companies. The lawsuit is one of several filed against DRAM makers after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) began an investigation into price fixing in 2002. That has already seen a number of guilty pleas by companies and executives and fines have been levied against some DRAM makers. Last year Samsung ElectronicsÂ wasÂ ordered to pay a $300 million criminal fineÂ and HynixÂ agreed to pay $185 million. InfineonÂ paid $160 million,Â and Japan's Elpida agreed toÂ pay a $84 million fine.
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Sun Microsystems has entered into a formal agreement with the Eastman Kodak Company to settle all claims in pending litigation regarding a software architecture based on the Java computer language.
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Eastman Kodak Co., poised to ask for more than &#36;1 billion in damages from Sun Microsystems Inc., has reached an out-of-court settlement in a long-running patent dispute over the Silicon Valley company's Java programming language.
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prostoalex writes &quot;The patent dispute between Eastman Kodak and Sun Microsystems in regards to three patents that EK claimed Sun was violating with Java, came to an end.
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Michael Tiemann criticizes software rival Sun for its support of patents and for keeping Java proprietary.
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Eastman Kodak Co. will return to US District Court next week to seek $1 billion in damages from Sun Microsystems Inc. now that a federal jury has ruled in its favor in a dispute over the Java computer language.
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Right before what promised to be a seven-day trial to decide whether it would have to pay Eastman Kodak a possible $3 billion for trespassing on three of its patents, Sun decided to settle out-of-court and pay Kodak $92 million in cash to get out from
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The suit seeks $1 billion in damages and an injunction against further violations.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Though a Friday patent lawsuit verdict against Sun Microsystems Inc. could potentially have a wide-ranging impact on the computer industry, the ruling appears unlikely to affect three of the world's largest IT companies, who have licensed the technology in question. Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are licensees of the software patents in question, the patents' owner, Eastman Kodak Co., confirmed Monday.
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SAN FRANCISCO - With $190 million in charges on its balance sheet related to restructuring and its recent patent lawsuit settlement with Eastman Kodak Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. on Thursday posted a net loss of $174 million for its the first quarter of its fiscal 2005 year, which ended September 26.
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Kodak is returning to court this week to claim $1bn in damages and unpaid royalties from Sun Microsystems. The court found in favour of the camera company on Friday and ruled that Sun had infringed Kodak&#39;s Java patents.
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A federal jury has backed Eastman Kodak Co. in a high-stakes, patent-infringement dispute with Sun Microsystems Inc. over the Silicon Valley company&#39;s popular Java programming language.