Eastman Kodak Company was founded on innovative technology and business models. We continue to build on that heritage by investing in both our own Research Laboratories as well as in strategic relationships.

Kodak External Alliances is focused on building relationships to expand current businesses and create new ones through technology partnerships that drive market differentiation in the following areas:

• Digital Media and Systems (includes images, videos and audio)
• Printing Technologies
• Emerging Materials Technologies

Kodak External Alliances enables select privately-held firms, universities and other research institutions to commercialize their technology in collaboration with the world's foremost imaging innovator.

Kodak Technology Interests

Image Modules

Lens and sensor imaging modules are reaching new levels of functionality while maintaining their compactness and robustness. Kodak is interested in software-based, hardware-based, or novel material-based systems to enable fast focusing, zooming and image stabilization with few moving parts in a miniature package. Furthermore, these novel systems should complement future-looking manufacturing approaches such as wafer level manufacturing and stackable electronic packaging.

Display Technologies

With digital displays in a vast majority of consumer products, Kodak is seeking novel displays for digital devices. Of interest are inexpensive touch screens and dramatically reduced display power consumption. However, color image quality, sunlight readability and low cost cannot be compromised.

Image Understanding

Given the vast number of digital images in personal collections, facial recognition and location recording are essential elements for indexing media collections. Kodak is seeking novel systems that enable image understanding to improve image quality. Image understanding algorithms shall also enable indexed media to enable search and browsing capability to find the desired image among thousands.

Sharing and Making Stories

Personal media has long brought people together to share and relive memories. Kodak is looking for easy methods to use personal and commercial digital media anytime, anywhere from the past or the present to produce entertaining stories and experiences in social networking settings in collaborative ways, regardless of participants’ locations.

Microfluidic Processes for Printing Applications

Kodak recently announced continuous ink jet technology with broad application to commercial print providers. Drop-on-demand inkjet technology has been used by consumers for home printing applications for many years. Both technologies exploit microfluidic techniques for directing small quantities of materials through an array of nozzles to create patterned output. Of immediate interest to Kodak are advances in low-cost material construction, new printhead architectures, micropump and microfiltration technologies that improve the robustness and performance of these print engines.

Printing Workflow and Software

Information management processes are reacting to an upsurge in digital information from the use of personalized data in custom printed output and from widespread use of scanners to convert document repositories. Kodak is seeking software solutions that will simplify the creation and handling of variable information at commercial printers using digital print systems. Separately, we are interested in distributed scanning applications that provide higher value business solutions.

Printing and Finishing Technologies

Kodak products and services are used in creating 40% of the world’s printed output. Kodak is seeking new deposition technologies applicable to both traditional and emerging processes, new means to control patterns of functional inks being applied to printed electronics, finishing devices that can be integrated with our digital print engines to create new print products. For example, we are interested in new equipment, methods or processes that enable end-users to create, print and bind photobooks.

Ink Technologies

Commercial and consumer users of digital print engines continue to demand new ink technologies to support new applications for differentiable products. Kodak’s interest in nanotechnology is focused on stable colloidal systems where nanoparticulates resist aggregation and maintain stability for long periods of time. Kodak seeks specific technologies to enable printing on non-porous surfaces, the use of magnetic inks, and the application of conductive inks on flexographic devices.

Intelligent Materials

Intelligent materials can adapt to their environment or can adjust their properties in a controlled manner to address specific functions. Kodak is interested in materials that exhibit hydrophobic-hydrophilic switching, or that perform molecular self-assembly to construct useful structures for printing processes or electronic applications. Of interest is the means to form micro-porous structures or barrier layers. Kodak is also interested in overt and covert materials and marking technologies to provide brand owners with security solutions to protect their goods from counterfeit products.