In April Kodak announced that it planned to sell its personalised and document imaging businesses to its UK pension plan, in a $650m (£400m) deal that allowed it to offload the giant pension liability owed to the scheme. Subsequently the remaining Kodak business was able to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September.
The spun-off operations owned by the plan are now known as Kodak Alaris.
US-based patent and intellectual property specialist Envision IP carried out research on behalf of some of Kodak’s shareholders during Kodak’s Chapter 11 process, so that the shareholders could understand the value of the patent portfolio and argue their case for compensation for their losses.
Envision identified 8,500 ‘in-force’ US patents owned by Eastman Kodak, and this week claimed that only 376 patents out of 4,100 that should supposedly have switched to Kodak Alaris as part of the sale deal have actually been transferred.
In a strongly-worded investment research posting, Envision stated: “Without identifying which patents Kodak planned to retain, the bankruptcy court blindly sided with Kodak’s attorneys, who stated that Kodak projected to earn only $35m in IP related revenues in 2013, versus Kodak’s $250m to $350m estimate provided in its Public Lender Presentation dated January 2012… Kodak appears to have fooled Judge Allan Gropper and the bankruptcy court into believing that most of its valuable patents would be transferred to the Pension Plan.”
It did include a caveat: "Perhaps the patent transfer and assignment process is still pending."
However, Kodak spokesman Christopher Veronda dismissed the claims absolutely, describing Envision’s assertions as “totally off base”.
He told PrintWeek: “These issues were long ago settled. Alaris has licences to key patent technology needed for their business.”
Kodak Alaris had not responded at the time of writing.
