Kodachrome patent

Photo Engineer · Jul 18, 2009

Some additional notes here:

1. It is illegal to make a false or misleading statement in a patent. You can paint with a broad or narrow brush describing the invention, but it must be correct. It must work for all cases described as well.

2. APS was a combined attempt of Kodak, Fuji and Agfa to develop a new format identical in size to the then-common digital image sensors, so that digital and analog could be as compatible as possible in lens, camera and print formats. In fact, the APS format was compatible with TV, HDTV and Widescreen so it was pretty much an attempt to match Hollywood and TV formats as well. The plans included talking still photos and 3D photos which I have seen. It all died stillborn.

PE

Heinz_Anderle · Jul 18, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
I would be careful about this page or the MSDS data.

The first 6 yellow developers listed used CD-4 and the 7th used CD-6 so something is wrong with the list somehow.

PE

Kodachrome home processing would of course require some experimentation on exposed b & w film, which CD would work best ;-)

Another question in regard to the original patent: already the Ektachrome E-4 process had replaced reversal light exposure by chemical fogging with tert-butylaminoborane; the K-14 patent gives borohydride as the reagent. Now the first is said to be quite toxic, and has been replaced in E-6 by borohydride, but the latter may generate explosive hydrogen upon decomposition or accidentaly with acids, so that both compounds may not be available to the darkroom amateur.

Would it make sense to expose the cyan- and yellow-processed film with broad-spectrum white light to achieve the reversal exposure for the magenta development? For a (hypothetical) micro-K-Lab, red, blue, and green or white LEDs might provide suitable light sources for the dedicated reversal exposures.

nickandre · Jul 18, 2009

Heinz_Anderle said:
Kodachrome home processing would of course require some experimentation on exposed b & w film, which CD would work best ;-)

Another question in regard to the original patent: already the Ektachrome E-4 process had replaced reversal light exposure by chemical fogging with tert-butylaminoborane; the K-14 patent gives borohydride as the reagent. Now the first is said to be quite toxic, and has been replaced in E-6 by borohydride, but the latter may generate explosive hydrogen upon decomposition or accidentaly with acids, so that both compounds may not be available to the darkroom amateur.

Would it make sense to expose the cyan- and yellow-processed film with broad-spectrum white light to achieve the reversal exposure for the magenta development? For a (hypothetical) micro-K-Lab, red, blue, and green or white LEDs might provide suitable light sources for the dedicated reversal exposures.

Yes.

Q.G. · Jul 18, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
Some additional notes here:

1. It is illegal to make a false or misleading statement in a patent. You can paint with a broad or narrow brush describing the invention, but it must be correct. It must work for all cases described as well.

That's why we get things like:
"Well, the patent shows CD-4 being used for Cyan and Magenta, but I was told it was CD-3 in K-14. Now, I am confused as well. [...]"

A patent is there to prevent competitors from doing stuff you do not want them to do.
Holding a patent by no means means that you, the holder of the patent, are doing what it says in the patent.

That too is why they typically contain phrases like:
"Although we have described our invention with particular reference to [...], our invention is in no way limited to this method."
or:
"We have described certain preferred embodiments of our invention, but it is to be understood that certain modifications [...] may be made within the full scope of the appending claims."

Keep it broad and vague, so it covers as much as possible.
Much more than you will be doing, but (hopefully) enough of what your competitor might be doing.

And don't give vital details away. Patents are like contracts: they are there because they will be broken.
And you do not want to help your competitors to the results of your research.

Photo Engineer said:
2. APS was a combined attempt of Kodak, Fuji and Agfa to develop a new format identical in size to the then-common digital image sensors, [...]

Your comment is about 5 years out of synch with events.
At the time, it was still about that long before sensor sizes became "common" at all.

APS was more an attempt to sell new equipment to people who already had things that did what they wanted.
Both consumers and the photofinishing industry.

Q.G. · Jul 18, 2009

By the way:

The one and only original Kodachrome patent:
US 1,196,080.

Photo Engineer · Jul 18, 2009

Well, it is reasonable to use white light to expose the green (magenta) layer. A fogging bath can be used as well such as the E6 reversal bath. So there are quite a few ways to do the final process. And, this leads me to the next answer. It is illegal to give false or misleading statements, but at the time the patent was written, the K-14 process was over 5 years from release and E6 (in the companion patent) and the color papers were several years from release. Look at the date on the patents for confirmation.

AFAIK, CD-6 was never tried or seriously considered for C-41. It was not active enough and did not give dyes with the proper hues. Generally, you want broader dyes for negative films, and narrower dyes for films being viewed by the human eye. This goes to polarity of the developing agent, and the activity of the developing agent.

And, this brings me to the next item. Ever hear of typograpical errors? I have several of my own patents with re-releases correcting typos or correcting outright errors in transcription. In fact, why are the 6 MSDS sheets in error? Or are they? Is Kodak doing something with the developers? IDK. I have been out of this loop for nearly 20 years! But the data is conflicting in nature.

Now to the last question above, I think.... It is possible to "develop" a generic Kodachrome process using B&W film. I have discussed it elsewhere. I suggest a tricolor camera or 3 exposures (R/G/B - Wr 98/99/70) on B&W film sheets.

You process each sheet to yield a positive, but the second developer should be your respective C/M/Y developers for the respective R/G/B exposures. When mounted in register, this should give you a faux Kodachrome or ersatz Kodachrome that can give you an idea of where you are in the process. Once there to your satisfaction, you can then dash off a test roll of Kodachrome. You will probably be in the ball park. Color balance will be off and density will be off, but it will be recognizable. One person here has done it and has posted their result. It was not bad all things considered.

PE

Q.G. · Jul 18, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
[...] And, this leads me to the next answer. It is illegal to give false or misleading statements, but [...]

There always is such a "but". Or a proviso as the ones quoted.
Which makes it very hard to do something illegal, like giving false information, in a patent. Doesn't mean that they contain correct information.

It's all about business, making money. About protecting your ideas, your investment, your market opportunities.

Photo Engineer · Jul 18, 2009

Q.G. said:
There always is such a "but". Or a proviso as the ones quoted.
Which makes it very hard to do something illegal, like giving false information, in a patent. Doesn't mean that they contain correct information.

It's all about business, making money. About protecting your ideas, your investment, your market opportunities.

Taking my comment out of context is rather a low blow.

I said that typos can take place and the patent was filed while work was still going on leaving room for changes. You can see that in the fact that the final film used the new hardener instead of the old one and allows for a higher process temperature without a prehardening step.

Ethical business practices, a course we were required to take at Kodak upon joining the company, gave us a good view of just the thing you infer always happens.

As it is, I wrote that patent personally from the lab notebooks and data of the individuals who worked with us. I was in the lab and worked with the technicians. However, since it was over 30 years ago, I don't remember the details and no work was done on Kodachrome since the early 80s.

Therefore it is easy for you to be an armchair critic and beat up on patents, but I would say that the phrase that is more operation is this one....

The patent must be sufficiently clear that it can be replicated by one skilled in the art. I am and therefore I could replicate it from the ground up!

Can you?

PE

Q.G. · Jul 18, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
Taking my comment out of context is rather a low blow.

I said that typos can take place and the patent was filed while work was still going on leaving room for changes. You can see that in the fact that the final film used the new hardener instead of the old one and allows for a higher process temperature without a prehardening step.

Ethical business practices, a course we were required to take at Kodak upon joining the company, gave us a good view of just the thing you infer always happens.

As it is, I wrote that patent personally from the lab notebooks and data of the individuals who worked with us. I was in the lab and worked with the technicians. However, since it was over 30 years ago, I don't remember the details and no work was done on Kodachrome since the early 80s.

Therefore it is easy for you to be an armchair critic and beat up on patents, but I would say that the phrase that is more operation is this one....

The patent must be sufficiently clear that it can be replicated by one skilled in the art. I am and therefore I could replicate it from the ground up!

Can you?

PE

No. I can't.

One other thing first: not a blow, not an 'attack', not 'beating up', or anything. Far from it.
I do not doubt for one second that you and your coworkers wrote the patent true to your conscience.

It is just a recognition of why patents exist. And of what patents are.

And it is not to share science that patents exist; scientific periodicals exist for that.

Patents are business tools. A patent's reason for being really is to prevent competitors from doing stuff you do not want them to do.

And as far as being correct goes: why, look (again) at what you write above! The patent text does not (!) describe the actual 'embodiment of the invention'.
So even though "the patent must be sufficiently clear that it can be replicated by one skilled in the art", someone who is couldn't recreate the product from it anymore than i could.

Unethical? Why would it be?

A patent describes a new concept. It does not have to tell all the practical details, as long as it makes clear what the new idea is.
Someone skilled in the art will have to be able to replicate the research and possibly hard work that turns that idea into something that works. It does not have to spell out the exact way you, the inventor, have turned the concept into a usable product.

And being ways to protect investment, and not contributions to scientific discours, noone expects a patent to be a user manual, or a step by step guide.

Being vague, not providing an how-to guide, not letting the competitor know how to turn an idea into a product, is not the same as deceiving.

Did you, any of your co-workers, or the company feel compelled to withdraw the patent and file an updated patent text?
Were the two Leo's dishonest/unethical when they mentioned "certain modifications", or that the patented idea was by no means limited to the embodiment they described in the patent text? Or were they (of Kodak's patent attorney) just clever businessmen?
I think the latter.

Photo Engineer · Jul 18, 2009

You may be confusing trade secrets with patents. Actually, what was described in the patent will work with Kodachrome film. So, having settled that, we now get to differences. It may be that the speed is higher or lower, grain is worse, or whatever. It will work. As for updating, this is not necessary, but has been done. I have several pages of updates just for my patents. Some were only updated in England, France or Germany due to misprints or errors in translation.

The bottom line is that the patent as described must work as described. It does. There are no caveats.

However, if we changed K-14 from that date onward, it would take one skilled in the art to modify it to match current production. And, it would take no modification of the patent to take this into account due to law and wording. So, to one skilled in the art, this is a user manual and a step by step guide to the status and modus operandi of K-14 in 1970, several years before release, and observation of results in this process of current production would tell me where I had gone wrong.

This is why I believe that you have misunderstood the situation.

I spent 1 year in the Kodak patent department and was asked to get a law degree and move to that dept. permanently. During that year, I believe I wrote about 100 or so patents under the guidance of the attorneys who were my mentors. I turned the offer down, and moved on, but I learned a lot about how to write, understand and interpret patents. I also learned a lot about the law involved.

So, I'll ask another question... Actually 2. How many patents have you written? and... How many patents do you hold? Or maybe a 3rd.... Are you a patent attorney?

You see, I have spent a lot of time just researching patents for background references and language, studying them in detail so that I can develop the language of the new "art". I wrote patents, but I was not allowed to write claims. These were the province of attorneys trained in their writing.

PE

james23p · Jul 19, 2009

Ron I just want to thank you for all the info you provide. I read your post often and they are always filled with great info!

Plus as a dedicated Kodachrome and Kodak user I enjoy the insight to the company that has provided me with most of my film for 30 years.

Last I would love an E-6 version of Kodachrome I hope Kodak is working on this but I will not hold my breath.

Again Thanks! Jim

Heinz_Anderle · Jul 19, 2009

A patent should describe the best known practice at the filing date - nothing more or less. The patent owner then may proceed with the development and may keep the improvements as a trade secret, or a competitor may work out a substantial improvement over the first patent and file this on his own - which then may cause troubles for the original owner as he can't use these improvements, while the competitor also couldn't use his own new patent except for blocking the owner of the older one. But the general public profits from patents in the way that the knowledge is disclosed - if only scientists and scientific writers would have a closer look also in these sources and not only in peer-reviewed publications which may be quite vague in the field of photographic technology!

I am sure that someone skilled in the art will be capable to re-build a Kodachrome-type film from the specific patents and the general knowledge in photographic technology, to obtain an even improved product, to ensure a certain compatibility to K-14, within a reasonably short time (Konishiroku and Fujifilm engineered their first color reversal films from the original Kodachrome patents), but would this make sense in the commercial aspect? The burden of Kodachrome appears to have been not the excellent film quality, but the complexity of processing and the need of dedicated labs.

Q.G. · Jul 19, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
You may be confusing [...]

Wow!
Rather patronizing, don't you think?
I'll drop this, after letting you know that i know my way round patents pretty well, yes. Know too why they exist, how they are used. Don't you worry!

Photo Engineer · Jul 19, 2009

I think Heinz summarizes the position very well and does it without appearing to be patronizing.

PE

alanrockwood · Jul 19, 2009

Q.G. said:
...What should also not be forgotten about patents is that they very rarely contain correct detailed descriptions of how things are done.
They are not meant to allow other companies to have a look in, but quite the opposite: to shut other companies out. So (apart from describing in length why the claims made are not already "prior art") they more often than not paint the broadest possible picture of the genius of a certain idea (mentioning every imaginable way an idea could be applied), while deliberately providing incorrect details.
Or in other words: patents are part of business tactics. Not scientific or historic documents...

You might have a point here. However, a patent is, under legal theory, a "teaching" document. To be valid a patent must be "enabling" which means that to be valid a patent must teach enough about the invention to enable someone skilled in the art to reproduce the invention. If a patent is deliberately misleading or incomplete then it can be challanged and the courts may rule that it is "unenforceable."

Furthermore, a patent is supposed to also teach the best way to do the invention described in the patent. There have, in fact, been patents that have been declared unenforceable because they did not teach the best way to do the invention. Of course, this would mean the best way to do the invention as understood by the inventors at the time of the writing of the patent.

wogster · Jul 19, 2009

alanrockwood said:
You might have a point here. However, a patent is, under legal theory, a "teaching" document. To be valid a patent must be "enabling" which means that to be valid a patent must teach enough about the invention to enable someone skilled in the art to reproduce the invention. If a patent is deliberately misleading or incomplete then it can be challanged and the courts may rule that it is "unenforceable."

Furthermore, a patent is supposed to also teach the best way to do the invention described in the patent. There have, in fact, been patents that have been declared unenforceable because they did not teach the best way to do the invention. Of course, this would mean the best way to do the invention as understood by the inventors at the time of the writing of the patent.

IANAL, but I think your last sentence explains it all, a patent can be filed at any time in the design phase, earlier is probably better, especially in this day an age when there are a lot of corporate spies, and you don't want your competitor to beat you to the punch. This does not however mean that the patent filer must cease work on the invention as soon as the patent is filed or that the patent must be updated for additional improvements. As long as the improvements don't make it different enough that it's no longer covered by the original patent. Wording can get you a lot of leeway too though.

For example in building a better mouse trap, you might use wording like "a firm hard base such as wood", a better wording then " a wood base", because you can use metal or plastic and still be within the wording of the patent. More importantly your competitor can't get around your patent by using a metal or plastic base, claiming that it no longer is covered by your patent.

Photo Engineer · Jul 19, 2009

Paul;

Very well said.

One restriction left out here is that a patent must be filed in the US before first production is sold on the open market. So, you cannot sell something and patent it at the same time. This virtually assures that any newly patented material was in development at the time the patent was filed. This is one reason why you see changes.

The patent on Kodachrome makes no big deal about hardeners or process temperature and they moved up about 10+ degrees in temp and changed hardener during the development phase. There was no effect on the working of the invention as CD-6 makes the same dye at 68F as it does at 100F. It makes the same dye regardless of hardener.

So, the invention is valid.

PE

accozzaglia · Jul 21, 2009

Re-post: Kodachrome layer ordering and composition, per PE.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists) from this originating thread and post.

Photo Engineer said:
If I posted an entire workable formula for Kodachrome with an ISO of about 25, would anyone make it? It cannot be hand coated except by a very good lab worker, but it can be machine coated with the aid of a coating engineer.

So, that would be a powerful question to have answered! I don't see anyone building their own coating machine nor anyone truly anxious to invest time and money in developing the film and process. It can be done, and I could probably post a set of workable formulas.

I would bet that no one would take me up on that.

The structure is /UV overcoat/Yellow/IL with yellow filter/Magenta/IL/Cyan/Support/RemJet backing The IL (Inter Layer contains 3-Sulfo-2,5 di-t-butyl Hydroquinone to prevent crosstalk. The yellow filter is colloidal silver. The rem-jet can be replaced with an antihal layer under the cyan layer which would be made of Gray colloidal silver.

I have no suggestions for the UV absorbing dye. It is essential though. The work would start by building a set of single layer coatings that showed feasibility, and then triple coats would be made (M + IL + C) for example, to show two color resolution and no crosstalk and finally assembly of the multilayer package to give full color photos.

PE

Aurum · Jul 21, 2009

UV filters are numerous. I have the choice of 21 in my day job, a core set of around 8-10 (I formulate SPF products)

Ron, would there be any preferred characteristics for the UV filter?
For instance water soluble / Non water Soluble, any preferred pH range, or particular spectrum?

For water soluble materials I would start with things like Benzophenone-4, or Disodium Phenyl Dibenzimidazole Tetrasulfonate (Easily available and cheap). Downside being that in solution they are naturally quite acidic. This may well do odd things to Gelatin

Photo Engineer · Jul 21, 2009

It would have to be very soluable in N, N - Diethyl Lauramide and ethyl acetate and have at least an octyl group ballast. It would have to cut off at about 380 - 400 nm. It would have to be neutral in pH.

PE

ricardo12458 · Jul 29, 2011

All patent arguments aside, where can I find the Kodachrome K-12 patent? Is it going to *try* to kill me like the E-4 process? (tert-butyl amine borane) I recently ran across some Kodachrome II....

Photo Engineer · Jul 29, 2011

They get more difficult as you go back in time. The original process was exceedingly complex. It required at least 6 more steps and a few more hours than the latest process. E4 is easy by comparison. What is your complaint?

PE

ricardo12458 · Jul 29, 2011

I have no complaints. And I only wanted the K-12 process. Not the original 1935 process.

Photo Engineer · Jul 29, 2011

It is there, and probably is referenced in the K-14 patent, I really don't remember. Best luck to you.

PE

hpulley · Jul 29, 2011

Lots of Kodachrome II around! Got three 25' rolls of 8mm in a recent lot of old film. Not sure why I buy such things but the 110 and 126 Kodacolor II, VP 828, Super XX 620 at least should be usable... Can I reload 110 cartridges with the Kodachrome II and process it as B&W? Sacrelige I know...

Kodachrome patent

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