Minneapolis – St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants, Inc. announces that JVC KENWOOD Holdings, Inc., Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. and JVC U.S.A. and Panasonic Corporation and Panasonic Corporation of North America have licensed St. Clair’s digital camera patents.

The patents cover digital camera technology that is incorporated in many popular cameras, camcorders and camera phones to allow images to be saved in different file formats, such as JPEG and MPEG.

St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants, Inc. is based in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. St. Clair is engaged in technology development and licensing. St. Clair was an early investor in Personal Computer Cameras, the company formed by the inventors to commercialize their patents and technology. PCC’s technology proved to be ahead of its time, and in 1995, St. Clair acquired the patents from PCC by a purchase agreement in which St. Clair agreed to share with PCC the royalties it obtained from licensing the patents.

St. Clair has filed several lawsuits over the patents in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. In a suit filed against Sony, a jury ruled in February 2003 that Sony had infringed all of the asserted claims of the patents and awarded St. Clair $25 million. Sony has since licensed the patents. In October 2004, a jury awarded St. Clair $34.7 million after finding Canon Inc. infringed the patents. Canon later settled the case for an undisclosed amount. Later that month, a jury ruled that Fuji Photo Film Co. infringed the same patents.

St. Clair’s other licensees include Sony Corporation, Nikon Corporation, Olympus Optical Co., Ltd., Minolta Co., Ltd., Seiko Epson Corporation, Casio Computer Co., Ltd., Kyocera Corporation, Pentax Corporation, Samsung Techwin Co., Ltd., Motorola, Inc., Eastman Kodak Company, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. and Pantech Co., Ltd. The licensed patents are United States Patent Nos. 5,138,459, 5,576,757, 6,094,219, 6,233,010, 6,323,899 and 6,496,222.

St. Clair is represented by Ronald J. Schutz, Jake M. Holdreith and Becky R. Thorson of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P.