According to a report by the Bloomberg, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), the two technology giants who compete against each other in tablets and smartphones, may become allies as they have rallied to acquire 1,000 imaging patents of Kodak, worth $500 million. Report of one such possible alliance was first published by the Wall Street Journal in August. However, the Journal had said in a previous report that both the giants would be seeking the patents in independent consortiums for the purchase of patents, in the range of $150 million and $200 million.
In January this year, Eastman Kodak, applied for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and is now selling this patent so that it can raise some amount for paying the debt of $950 million to Citibank. The company has said in a statement that it is hopeful of exit from bankruptcy in the year 2013. According to the court documents, the company values its patent documents at around $2.6 billion.
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In July 2011, there was another contest of some high value patents and then Google Inc (GOOG) and Apple Inc (AAPL) were on the opposite ranks. A consortium comprising of the giant technology companies like EMC, Apple, Ericsson, Research in Motion, Microsoft, and Sony bought around 6,000 patents and patent applications worth $4.5 billion from Nortel Networks. On the other camp were rivals Intel and Google, who had began the bidding for intellectual property, which included patent and patent applications for data networking, wireless, wireless 4G, Internet, voice, optical and semiconductor technologies for $900 million.
The patents for digital imaging which are relevant to smartphones, cameras, and other devices could be helpful for both Google Inc and Apple Inc who are embroiled in many patent disputes. Apple inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) has also been engaged in patent disputes with Samsung and other Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android-based vendors.