Check out my latest column in the Sun Sentinel:
"Gingrich is right that adolescent jobs teach
basic job skills"
01.16.12
by Steven H. Kurlander
#1 - A final Kodak moment?
Last Thursday, the former American technological powerhouse Eastman Kodak ran out of cash and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York to allow it to reorganize and restructure its $6.8 billion in debt obligations.
Established in 1880 and the pioneer in the development of camera film in the 20th century, the company has been struggling over the last four decades to contend with foreign competitors and to transition into today's digital imagining world. Restructuring a number of times before the bankruptcy, Kodak had already closed 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs and reduced its workforce by 47,000 workers since 2003. It stopped manufacturing its renowned Kodachrome color film in 2009.
The company hopes to reemerge next year as a smaller company with fewer of its 17,000 employees and to reduce its debt burden of $245 million in pension obligations and $658 million to unsecured bond holders. Kodak has twice as many retirees than employees. The bankruptcy threatens to wipe out promised health and other pension benefits for thousands of retired Kodak employees.
While Kodak has recently tried to recreate itself as an inkjet printer company, the company was forced into bankruptcy partly because many of its competitors accused of stealing its patented digital technology adopted a legal strategy of slowing down the litigation process as much as possible to force Kodak into insolvency.
Kodak has been prosecuting patent infringement lawsuits against a number of competitors for years, including Apple, Fuji Film, Samsung, Research in Motion, and HTC of Taiwan. The company recently raised $3 billion in revenue it should had already collected if the company's intellectual property rights had been respected. As part of the bankruptcy plan, Kodak will continue to prosecute other such cases and sell its portfolio of over 1,100 digital imaging patents to raise cash for the newly structured company.
The Kodak bankruptcy illustrated how a trend in the technology world to first steal intellectual property and fight about it later in court can lead to severe consequences for our economy and established American companies and their workers.
Last September, President Obama signed The America Invents Act which was designed to allow entrepreneurs to fast track their patent applications and to reduce litigation in obtaining such patents. The Kodak bankruptcy illustrates how established companies need the same streamlined litigation protection against theft by competitors once the patents are obtained. Comment |
#2 - Forget OWS (who?), how about a new "protest cloud" movement?
The debate about protecting intellectual property rights vs. unfettered Internet access was brought to the forefront last week with an Internet protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. The Internet political demonstration successfully prevented these bills from being passed into law.
A number of major websites lead by Wikipedia blacked out their web pages last Wednesday in protest of the new law. The blackout galvanized millions across the globe to sign online petitions against passage of SOPA and PIPA.
The proposed anti-piracy laws were designed to allow the Justice Department to crack down on counterfeiting and unauthorized sale of intellectual property-specifically movies and music. SOPA and PIPA would have allowed the issuing of a court order requiring US internet providers to block access to foreign pirate websites. It is estimated that Internet piracy costs the US economy $100 billion a year.
Opponents of the law argued that giving power to the government to shut down suspected sites condoning piracy of intellectual matter would chill free expression on the Internet and punish websites that had users posting infringing content.
The most impressive aspect of the debate last week was the effectiveness of grassroots organizing over the Internet and the end result of Congress being pressured into not acting on the bills. The galvanization of concern for freedom of expression beat out the influence of the powerful lobbying of the music and movie businesses to stop the law from being passed.
In July of last year, I wrote an article arguing for the development and mandating of a computer "political citizen cloud" model that would allow constituents at all levels of government to be included in the formulation of policy and laws. The idea came to fruition last week.
The massive protest against SOPA and PIPA last week illustrated the feasibility and the effectiveness of using the Internet to bring goverment back to the people and reform and capture our governments back from the powerful lobbyists that now run politicians at all levels of government. Comment |
#3 - How about an iProtest agains American companies that keep manufacturing jobs overseas?
The New York Times ran a provocative article last week entitled "How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work" which outlined why Apple, today's premier "American" technological giant, will not manufacture its products, particularly the iPhone, in the US.
Because Apple's hugely profitable business model is premised on readily available cheap labor and quick, adaptable and mobile high tech manufacturing that is found in China, hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs have been created by both Apple and its suppliers over the last decade in the Communist state and other nations. Apple will not consider establishing similar operations in the US.
The flight of manufacturing jobs overseas is a major issue in any discussion of restarting our economy, particularly as the 2012 election campaign unfolds. Apple is expected to report tomorrow revenues of $40.2 billion and huge profit of $11 a share. It would be interesting for any of the GOP candidates to transform the recent campaign discussion of "vulture capitalism" surrounding the Mitt Romney's business experience at Bain into attacking the "i-Phone" model of American capitalism that sanctions colossal profits at the expense of assuming a moral, and even patriotic, responsibility to sacrifice a portion of that profit to reinvest in reinventing American manufacturing and workers.
Now that would be a unique Kodak moment.
Have a great week. Kurly. Comment |
