Microsoft is a licensee of US Patent Trademark Office patents numbered 5226161, 5206951, and 5421012, the Eastman Kodak Co. confirmed yesterday, seemingly ending speculation - in the wake of Kodak's victory in its patent infringement suit against Sun - that perhaps IBM, HP, and Microsoft would be the next companies taken to court over the Kodak-patented way for a piece of software to "ask for help" from another application. A method that not only Java but also .NET relies on heavily, since it is more or less the keystone to OO programming.

Eastman Kodak purchased the patents in question from Wang Laboratories in 1997 when it bought Wang's imaging software business for $260 million and is now looking for restitution in the damages part of the trial against Sun to the tune of $1.06 billion in past royalties - which Kodak's lawyers calculate represents half of Sun's operating profit from the sales of computer servers and storage equipment between January 1998 and June 2001.

Patent 5206951 covers the integration of data between typed objects by mutual, direct invocation between object managers corresponding to object types.

Patent 5421012 covers multitasking computer system for integrating the operation of different application programs which manipulate data objects of different types.

And Patent 5226161 covers integration of data between typed data structures by mutual direct invocation between data managers corresponding to data types

A spokesman for Kodak said on Friday, as a federal jury found in its favor: "Kodak has and continues to make substantial technology investments to ensure high-quality products. We are pleased that the court has validated Kodak's intellectual property rights protecting these valuable innovations."

Microsoft .NET developers will be relieved to hear that they do not face the same kind of litigation from Kodak. $1.06 billion is more than just chump change, even for Redmond.