Apple recently won its first battle in its patent war against Taiwanese smartphone and tablet maker HTC, when an ITC judge determined that HTC infringed upon two of the ten patents for which the iPad and iPhone maker is suing it over. However, the Cupertino-based tech outfit’s patent clash with Kodak isn’t going so smoothly.

The Eastman Kodak company sued both Apple and Canadian smartphone and tablet maker Research In Motion (RIM) at the beginning of the year. It did so in order to get royalty payments that relate to its patents, which regards the use of image preview technology for the built-in cameras of mobile phones.

Apple filed a counter-suit against Kodak, claiming that the camera maker illegitimately employed its digital camera technologies within numerous camera- and video camera ranges. In May a judge of the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled in favour of Kodak, finding that the camera maker had not infringed upon Apple’s patented technology for digital cameras. The judges’ ruling still had to be upheld or rejected by the full ITC panel.

According to Bloomberg, the US ITC has now stated that the ruling made by ITC Judge Robert Rogers in May will stand. The commission in the Kodak complaint is currently reviewing a judge’s finding in January, which stated that Apple iPhone smartphones and RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones do not violate Kodak’s patent.

 

The publication reported that Kodak’s CEO Antonio Perez, is working hard to get Apple and RIM to fork over royalty payments to his company. Perez said that a licensing deal with these two tech giants may result in new revenue of up to $1 billion for Kodak.