Toward the end of last year, Kodak lowered projections for its full-year revenue and year-end cash balance, and on Jan. 3 warned that it could face delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company has warned that performance this year will depend on it selling its digital imaging patents to raise cash for future investments, and there have been reports that the company is preparing to seek bankruptcy protection.
In this age of intellectual property lawsuits, patents have proven to be a very valuable commodity. For example, last year, Nortel sold 6,000 patents and patent applications for US$4.5 billion to a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony, following a bidding war with Google, which later made a $12.5 billion bid to buy Motorola Mobility. The reasoning behind that deal is in part to better protect Android from patent lawsuits.
