Edible Apple

This past Friday, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) decided to review a Judge’s findings from this past January where he ruled that an image preview feature used in Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry devices doesn’t infringe on Kodak patents. The patent in question involves taking a high resolution photo yet using a low resolution image preview to conserve processing power.

With a re-review now on schedule, Kodak’s efforts to extract millions in licensing fees remain alive. Indeed, Kodak CEO Antonio Perez said that a Kodak victory in the ITC may net Kodak more than $1 billion in revenue from royalty payments.

Kodak has previously used its patent portfolio, as it pertains to image previews, to win multimillion dollar settlements from Samsung and LG.

A final ruling on the case should come before May 23.

This ITC action aside, Kodak and Apple are currently embroiled in a number of other lawsuits. In January 2010, Kodak filed two lawsuits against Apple alleging that the Cupertino-based company was infringing on Kodak patents pertaining to digital cameras and computer processes. Apple soon countersued claiming that Kodak prodcuts infringed on Apple products in the realm of image processing, energy management, and memory design. Apple lobbied an ITC complaint against Kodak as well.