Kodak given a year to sort finances
Photography pioneer Kodak has a little over a year to reshape its money-losing businesses and deliver a get-out-of-bankruptcy plan.
Girded by a $950m financing deal with Citigroup, the firm aims to keep operating normally during bankruptcy while it peddles a trove of digital-imaging patents.
After years of mammoth cost-cutting and turnaround efforts, Kodak ran short of cash and sought protection from its creditors on Thursday. It is required under its bankruptcy financing terms to produce a reorganisation plan by February 15 2013.
US Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper in New York gave Kodak permission to borrow an initial 650 million dollars (£418 million) from Citigroup
He also set a June 30 deadline for Kodak to seek his approval of bidding procedures for the sale of 1,100 patents that analysts estimate could fetch at least $2bn. No buyers have emerged since Kodak started shopping these around in July 2011.
Through negotiations and lawsuits, Kodak has already collected $1.9bn in patent licensing fees and royalties since 2008.
Last week, it intensified efforts to defend its intellectual property by filing patent-infringement lawsuits against Apple, HTC, Samsung Electronics and Fujifilm.
Kodak is also pursuing another high-stakes dispute before the US International Trade Commission in Washington DC against Apple and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion over image-preview technology it patented in 2002.
Kodak has said it hopes to garner $1bn from the two-year-old claim. But the commission, a US arbiter for trade disputes, recently deferred its decision until September.
