GUILDFORD, England, Feb. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Grandeye, Ltd. (http://www.grandeye.com/), the leading supplier of 360-degree surveillance cameras, announced that it has reached a comprehensive settlement with the bankruptcy Trustee of IPIX on patents involved in the litigation initiated by Grandeye against IPIX in March of 2005, in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia to establish ownership and non-infringement of the key IPIX patents.
IPIX best known for 360-degree panoramic cameras for use in the real estate and immersive security applications, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on July 31, 2006, with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Case Number 06-10856-RGM). The final settlement of Grandeye with IPIX's bankruptcy Trustee has been approved by the Bankruptcy Court.
According to the terms of Grandeye's settlement with IPIX's Trustee: -- Grandeye is granted royalty free worldwide license for the patents-in- suit in the litigation against IPIX and all United States and foreign patent applications owned by IPIX including all divisional, continuation, continuation-in-part, substitute, renewal and reissue applications. These have been or shall be filed on any of the inventions disclosed in the patents-in-suit; and all original United States and foreign patents, reissued patents, and confirmation patents owned by IPIX and patents of addition which have been or shall be issued on said inventions; -- IPIX's Trustee agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to Grandeye to forfeit its ownership claims on the patents-in-suit in the litigation against IPIX; and -- The parties granted mutual universal releases to dispose of all current claims and litigation that are customary in any settlement agreement.
Following the resolution of Grandeye's dispute with IPIX, Sony purchased IPIX's patents for $3.6 million in an auction that took place in open court as part of the company's bankruptcy sale, with an undertaking to uphold the terms of Grandeye's settlement.
Dr. Yavuz Ahiska, founder and CEO of Grandeye, Ltd., stated that, "When a new technology causes a paradigm shift and creates a new market segment, the consolidation of the intellectual property rights (IPR) relating to this innovation becomes the most important issue. While the IPR ownership is fragmented ongoing disputes unavoidably delay the penetration of applicable markets. We have now achieved a major breakthrough and consolidated the IPR in relation to 360-degree video cameras. As we have shown in the past we intend to defend our hard won positions and I could anticipate from their corporate actions that Sony will do the same."
The winner of the Best of Show award at ISC West 2006, Grandeye, Ltd. has the richest IP in the industry with over twenty six patents and patent applications relating to 360-degree image capture and video stitching, perspective projection using 3D computer graphics (including within a DVR / NVR), intelligent virtual camera generation and dome camera emulation.
Dr. Ahiska also stated that, "We are the market leader in 360-degree security cameras and with this settlement we are poised to accelerate our penetration into the US market."
Grandeye, Ltd., based in Surrey University Technology Centre, Guildford, UK, is the market and technology leader in 360-degree cameras for situational awareness. Its award-winning Halocam technology based on a dedicated IMTERA processor, currently powers a number of 360-degree cameras supplied by a number of OEM manufacturers and system integrators with distribution channels covering all five continents. Dr. Yavuz Ahiska is a successful entrepreneur who co-founded DuPont Pixel Systems, (acquired by DuPont) 3Dlabs Inc. (acquired by Creative Technologies: CREAF) and Visioprime Ltd. (acquired by Novar plc).
CONTACTS:
Robert Gregson
Grandeye, Ltd.
44-1483-302312
