P. J. Alling wrote: >A friend of mine who did some wading into the shallow end of the >Polaroid patents, came the conclusion that Polaroid had patented the >process of osmosis, which was the basis for their claim. He was >astounded that Polaroid won the case.
I was living in Rochester, NY at the time of the Kodak instant cameras and the Polaroid lawsuit. Based on what I recall from newspaper coverage at the time (and it was *extensive*, needless to say!), the *mechanical* design of the system was pivotal. The Polaroid system used a reservoir "blister" at the end of each print which contained development chemistry and after exposure, the print was forced through a set of precision rollers which broke the blister open to release the chemistry and spread the chemicals evenly over the photosensitive part of the print media (while still containing everything inside the print media as a whole). Kodak essentially copied this patented process which, though it might seem "obvious" now, wasn't considered so at the time. (At least not by the court that heard the case, which is what counts!) Newspaper articles around the time of the verdict had all kinds of diagrams of both mechanisms. -- Mark Roberts Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com 412-687-2835 -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
