laptop and notebook

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine: Sony is not only branding its own line of SD cards, but also most of its point-and-shoot cameras and camcorders for 2010 actually have combo slots that can take SD cards in addition to Sony’s hopefully-dying-soon Memory Stick Duo cards. The laptop battery company’s dSLRs have long been SD- and CompactFlash-friendly.

For the purposes of digital cameras and camcorders, Memory Stick has always been more expensive yet slower than its SD competitors. Though we long ago resigned ourselves to the knowledge that buying Sony meant buying Memory Stick, we still get e-mails from readers complaining that we fail to highlight the need for Memory Stick Duo as a “con” in our dell-latitude-d520.htm”>Latitude D520 battery reviews.

And that’s just the tip of the dying-media iceberg. Long in a similar position, Olympus has also added SD support to its snapshot cameras, which have been hobbled by proprietary xD-Picture Cards. While Sony and Panasonic have each announced a couple of hard-drive camcorders, no one is offering new DVD-based models, and Canon has gone completely flash. (While hard drives allow for high capacities on the cheap, hard drives are more prone to failure than most media and their relatively large size makes for bulky devices.)

In other SD news, Panasonic announced the first SDXC cards (In my CES preview, I embarrassingly predicted that we absolutely wouldn’t see any SDXC stuff, so of course it’s everywhere.) Most of the camcorders announced at the show and at least Canon’s snapshot cameras incorporate support for the new format. Panasonic’s first shipping cards will be rated Class 10 in 48GB and 64GB capacities–at admittedly high initial prices of $449.95 and $599.95, respectively–and use the company’s proprietary, error-correction optimized controller technology. They’ll be available in February. Toshiba PA3176U-1BRS also announced its 64GB SDXC card, but with a vaguer second quarter ship date and no pricing.

The SDXC format, announced a year ago, technically supports capacities up to 2TB and is theoretically capable of a bandwidth of 300 megabytes per second (should we call it “Class 300?”). Right now, no camcorders require much past Class 6-equivalent performance, including Class 10 cards with their 10 megabyte per second performance floor, but the higher capacity will certain come in handy in the interim.

Eastman Kodak on Thursday announced that it has filed legal complaints against Apple  and Research in Motion alleging patent infringement.

The photo company claims the camera technology used in Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry to preview images infringes on a digital imaging patent owned by Kodak. In a complaint filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), Kodak is asking that certain mobile phones with digital cameras be excluded from import unless the laptop battery company can reach a fair method of compensation with Apple and RIM.

“In the case of Apple and RIM, we’ve had discussions for years with both companies in an attempt to resolve this issue amicably, and we have not been able to reach a satisfactory agreement,” said Laura Quatela, Kodak’s chief intellectual property officer, in a statement. “In light of that, we are taking this action to ensure that we protect the interests of our shareholders and the existing licensees of our technology.”

To further back up its claims, Kodak has also filed two lawsuits against Apple in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. In the first suit, Kodak is alleging that Apple is violating two patents related to image preview and the ability to process images of different resolutions Latitude D410 battery.

In the second suit, Kodak claims infringement by Apple in a process by which one computer program can call on another to carry out certain functions. The first suit relates specifically to the iPhone, while the second is being targeted against any Apple product using that specific process.

In pursuing these lawsuits, Kodak seems to have the benefit of legal precedence on its side. The patents described in the second suit were the same ones that played a role in the lawsuit that Kodak filed against Sun Microsystems in 2002. That suit alleged that certain technologies found in Sun’s Java programming environment violated three Kodak patents. After two years in the courts, the case was finally settled in favor of Kodak, which received payment from Sun in return for a license to use the Latitude D420 battery technologies in question.

In a more recent case, Kodak filed a complaint in 2008 with the ITC against Samsung, alleging that certain Samsung mobile phones equipped with cameras infringed on Kodak patents. In December, an ITC judge ruled in favor of Kodak, finding that Samsung had violated the patents. On Wednesday, the two companies apparently shook hands to set up a cross-licensing deal, thereby stopping all pending lawsuits and legal action. As a result of the settlement, Kodak will receive royalties from Samsung.

In its actions against both Apple and RIM, Kodak is seeking damages and a halt to the patent infringement but seems hopeful the cases can be settled without much legal hassle.

“We remain open to negotiating a fair and amicable agreement with both Apple and RIM, which has always been our preference and our practice with other licensees,” Quatela said. “We seek to avoid litigation in our licensing programs whenever possible. But when the infringement is persistent, we will act to defend the interests of our Latitude D430 battery shareholders and licensees, and to promote the fair compensation that is the bedrock of innovation.”