LITTLE ROCK — Judge OKs deal for Kodak patents
Technology companies including Apple Inc. and Google Inc. won court approval of a $527 million deal for Eastman Kodak Co. patents that are being sold as part of Kodak’s bid to exit bankruptcy protection.
The agreement, approved at a hearing Friday by U.S.
Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper in Manhattan, is worth less than the more than $2 billion value of the patents estimated by a Kodak advisory firm. Gropper acknowledged that the company was “disappointed” in the price.
“But we’re moving the case forward, so we should be optimistic,” he said.
The group, which also includes Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc., Research In Motion Ltd., and Samsung Electronics Co., came together after Kodak won bankruptcy court approval last year to auction more than 1,000 patents related to the capture, manipulation and sharing of digital images.
Kodak, based in Rochester, N.Y., filed for bankruptcy in January last year and began the auction in August. The company said in court papers that a previous estimate of as much $2.6 billion for the patents “was not achievable.”
-Bloomberg News
Tumblr tops Facebook in survey
A survey released recently found that there were more teens and young adults who said they use Tumblr on a regular basis than those who said they use Facebook.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents between the ages of 13 and 25 said they use Tumblr regularly; 54 percent said they use Facebook on a regular basis.
Among those 13 to 18, the percentage who said they use Tumblr regularly was even higher - 61 percent compared with 55 percent who said they use Facebook regularly.
The survey was conducted by start up Survata. It surveyed 1,038 people after Gerry Tan, one of Survata’s investors, became curious about which social networks younger Internet users are turning to.
The results aren’t too surprising. Just last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that while teens are still logging on to Facebook, they are also turning to a variety of other social networks.
- Los Angeles Times
Amazon sings AutoRip’s praises
SAN FRANCISCO - Amazon.com Inc. made another bid to improve its position in the digital-music market Thursday, launching a service that will give customers free digital versions of CDs they purchase from the online megaretailer.
Amazon said that the new, free service called AutoRip will initially feature more than 50,000 albums. In addition, any album purchased from Amazon since 1998 and is covered under AutoRip will be included.
When a customer buys a CD that is part of AutoRip, a digital file of the album will be added to his Amazon Cloud Player library. The digital version can then be played on a computer, tablet or smart phone using the Amazon Cloud Player app, as well as downloaded to those devices.
Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice president of digital music, said the addition of AutoRip “adds value to owning music, which obviously benefits everyone in the music industry, including record labels and artists.”
Apple Inc., offers more than 26 million songs for sale on its iTunes store. Officials from Apple didn’t immediately return requests for comment on Amazon’s AutoRip service.
Amazon said it currently offers more than 21 million songs for sale on its MP3 store.
The main difference between Amazon’s and Apple’s offerings is that Amazon sells physical CDs, while Apple sells only the digital files of albums and songs. The growth of digital music has changed the overall music market, with digital-sales growth outstripping that of CDs.
- MarketWatch/MCT
Japan ruling favors online drug sales
Rakuten Inc. unit Kenko.com Inc., an online retailer that quadrupled in Tokyo trading in the past 30 days, won a lawsuit seeking the Japanese government’s withdrawal of a ban on selling over-the-counter drugs online.
The Supreme Court in Tokyo on Friday rejected an appeal by the government, allowing resumption of Internet sales of items including cold remedies, pregnancy tests and laxatives.
The ruling permits online sales of two categories of drugs accounting for about 67 percent of all nonprescription purchases in a country where such medicines are sold offline only by specially licensed retailers. The Japan Pharmaceutical Association, representing about 100,000 licensed pharmacists, had opposed online sales, saying they increased risks that users would experience side effects.
“I can’t describe how happy I am in words,” Kenko.com President Genri Goto said in a briefing in Tokyo after the ruling. “We have suffered tremendously mentally and financially for the past four years.” - Bloomberg News
Business, Pages 20 on 01/14/2013