Stefan Mileschin

Patent trolls are getting all moist about a fire sale of Eastman Kodak patents.

Kodak has asked permission to sell off its Digital Capture and Kodak imaging Systems and Services patent portfolios, which are made up of more than 1,100 patents.

The company's plan is that only the winning bidder and the successful bid amount will be publicly announced at the end of the auction. This means that if anyone big goes for the patents we will not know about it until they have got it.

According to Reuters, the auction will be held in early August and the winning bidder being announced by August 13.

Timothy Lynch, Kodak's Chief Intellectual Property Officer said Kodak was moving ahead as quickly as possible with the process of making money from the company's digital imaging patent portfolio.

The company's financial adviser, Lazard, has hawked around these assets over the past year, and 20 parties have signed confidentiality agreements to date.

There would be a lot of interest in the patent troll industry. Kodak invented the handheld camera and the digital camera, so whoever holds those patents could make a bob or two.

http://news.techeye.net/business/kod...maging-patents