Entrepreneurial IP Consultants Strike Gold With Digital Camera Patents

Commentators are hailing the victory of St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants Inc. in its patent infringement suits against the camera-producing giants Canon Inc., and Sony Corp. St. Clair specializes in IP consulting for startup companies. In the early 1990’s St. Clair invested in a company called Personal Computer Cameras Inc. founded by the inventors of the first digital camera. Personal Computer Cameras ran short of investment dollars in the mid 1990’s, and in 1995 sold its digital camera patents to St. Clair with the agreement that future royalties would be split 50/50 between St. Clair and the inventors. St. Clair and the inventors appear to have struck gold, winning a $25 Million jury verdict against Sony in 2003, and $34.7 Million against Canon earlier this month. St. Clair is currently awaiting a verdict in excess of $18 Million against Fuji Photo Film Co. Minolta, Nikon and four other companies named as defendants in the Sony suit have reached settlement agreements and taken licenses from St. Clair.

St. Clair is small firm comprised of two patent attorneys and six staff members that makes its home above a storefront in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. The firm holds a portfolio of twenty-one patents, five of which relate to digital camera technologies. According to St. Clair’s attorney, Ron Schutz of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ceresi, the infringed technology allows digital cameras to take pictures in more than one format, such as TIFF and JPEG files. The technology also covers cameras that can take short video clips in addition to still pictures.

St. Clairs wins are being celebrated as a victory for the little guys. St. Clair founder Thomas W. Baumgarten definitely recognized the value of the digital camera when he first viewed the prototype back in the early nineties. And, St. Clair has clearly done the job of an IP portfolio firm, defending and licensing its patents. But, is St. Clair so distinct from every other portfolio firm? Maybe the major asset of St. Clair is the ability to recognize an emerging technology and hold onto it even after other investors have bailed out. Meanwhile, entrepreneurial St. Clair founder, Thomas Baumgarten has gone on to manage buypatents.com, a fully internet based patent brokerage firm, designed exclusively by patent brokers as a resource to buy and sell patents as efficiently as possible.