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Comment by tooney712 | Hacker News Reader

The go to example of this will always be Kodak.

Steven Sasson invented the first digital camera (and a device to display it on) in 1975 while working at R&D at Kodak. He had a fully functional DSLR by 1989, complete with memory cards. Kodak never released his work, never manufactured that camera. They kept the patent of the work and sat on it, and when others tried to innovate and create a digital camera, Kodak sued them with that patent and kept suing people right up until the patent ran out in 2007. By 2012, the company was bankrupt.

Innovation, true innovation that really pushes technology forward, is anathema to the average business.

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A "use it or lose it" clause would be great for patent law.

While I appreciate how hard it would be to implement properly, I don't think that should be an impediment to getting the process started.

>While I appreciate how hard it would be to implement properly

Isn't that part of what it means to acquire a patent? Trying to get a patent on something that I don't yet know how to actually implement should be denied, right?

Nope. It's actually best practice to get one even without an implementation because usually the threat of a lawsuit is enough of a chilling effect to keep the competition guessing.

Of course the risk is that if someone else challenges you on it, and you can't provide the implementation, you can have your patent invalidated.

At least that's my understanding of the tactics of patent warfare.

>Kodak never released his work, never manufactured that camera

other than selling $20 million worth of 1991 Kodak DCS 100, and following it with many more advanced models ....

Selling just under 1000 refitted nikon cameras over 4 years doesn't seem like pushing digital cameras hard. They even brought the nikon bodies through retail.[0]

If that's not dragging your feet I don't know what is. They could have defined the marked for professional digital cameras. Instead they just proved that a digital nikon would work nicely.

[0]https://www.nikonweb.com/dcs100/

That is one of several reasons that innovation in the U.S. is mortally wounded.

> Kodak never released his work, never manufactured that camera. They kept the patent of the work and sat on it, and when others tried to innovate and create a digital camera, Kodak sued them with that patent and kept suing people right up until the patent ran out in 2007. By 2012, the company was bankrupt.

I bought a Kodak digital camera in the 90s, and other brands too, so I doubt that version of events.

did you buy a Kodak dslr, or just a digital camera? I'm guessing there's some difference?

You're right there's a difference and it wasn't a DSLR. The comment I responded to wasn't entirely clear that Kodak only blocked the development of a digital DSLR, if that's what was meant.

> when others tried to innovate and create a digital camera, Kodak sued them

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