While Apple and Google are competitors in terms of smartphone platforms, they aren’t exactly suing each other, and interestingly it seems that both companies have even gone as far as teaming up together to buy Kodak’s patents for a whopping $500 million. There are other companies reportedly part of this deal, such as Microsoft and Intellectual Ventures, RPX Corp and Asian makers of Google’s Android products. This teaming up is due to the asking price of Kodak’s patents, $500 million which neither side wanted to fork out all by themselves.
We imagine that this purchase of Kodak’s patents will not only boost the portfolios of the companies involved, but at the same time should neutralize Kodak’s lawsuits against Apple and some of Google’s manufacturing partners, whereby Kodak claims that those companies had infringed upon some of their digital imaging patents. While the lawsuits could be neutralized with the purchase of these patents, this will at the same time allow Kodak access to the $830 million exit financing which was contingent on its sale of their patents.