Fujifilm originally sought damages of $40 million for infringement of four patents.
According to a Reuters report, the court only accepted one of the patent infringements as valid. The patent in question related to the conversion of colour images to monochrome, and various Motorola phones and tablets were accused of infringing it.
The others, which the court ruled as invalid, included one related to face detection in digital photography, one related to image display on viewfinders, and one related to wireless communication.
Fujifilm’s original lawsuit, which you can read here, was filed in 2012, back when Motorola was a Google subsidiary (it was subsequently sold to Lenovo).
The two firms had been in talks for several months regarding the infringements, but had been unable to reach an agreeable settlement.
This isn’t the first large-scale patent battle in the photo world – Nikon and Sigma recently called a truce after a four-year dispute over vibration reduction, which ended with Sigma agreeing to pay an undisclosed amount.
And a large-scale dispute between Kodak and Ricoh – again over a patent issue – resulted in an extremely large settlement payout when it finally came to an end in 2014.
In a statement to Reuters, a Motorola spokesman said the firm was ‘evaluating [its] options’ in relation to the ruling.
