Kodak Nets $76M in Patent Settlement with Ricoh

To settle a legal dispute over patent licenses and royalties, Ricoh Co. Ltd. has agreed to pay Eastman Kodak Co. up to $76 million. In April 2012, Kodak accused Ricoh of defaulting on royalty payments due from its use of Kodak patents.

According to Kodak, once Ricoh bought camera maker Pentax Imaging Systems in 2011, it owed back royalties since Pentax had never signed any digital imaging licensing agreement with Kodak.

Ricoh argued that it had paid Kodak everything owed by the patent license agreement for its own products, and that it could not be proved that Pentax ever infringed on Kodak’s patents.

Christopher Veronda, Manager of Corporate Communications at Kodak, said the case was to be tried in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. But before the trial, Ricoh and Kodak both agreed that no matter what the trial’s outcome would be, Ricoh would pay Kodak altogether $75.8 million to settle the case.

Veronda noted that although Kodak had sold its product range of about 1,100 digital imaging patents in 2012, the money from Ricoh will go to it since Kodak owned them during the nine years between Ricoh’s signing a licensing agreement and its Pentax acquisition.