On Demand also announced a partnership with ReaderLink, which distributes books to grocery stores, drugstores, mass market and club stores, to make more titles available through the Kodak Picture Kiosks.

“We envision an integrated solution that can substantially redefine the publishing industry and bring exciting new solutions to customers,” said On Demand CEO Dane Neller in the release.

There are 105,000 Kodak Picture Kiosks globally; you can find them in chains like CVS as well as photography stores, pharmacies and other retail outlets. The partnership with On Demand launches in the U.S. this year and will expand internationally in 2013.

On Demand Books was founded by former Random House editorial director Jason Epstein; Neller, the former CEO of Dean & DeLuca; and Thor Sigvaldason, a former technology consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, in 2003. The company already has a partnership with Xerox that has placed Espresso Book Machines in about 70 bookstores and libraries globally, but the Kodak partnership will expand its footprint substantially.

The company stated in a press release that it had filed suit in federal court in its home town of Rochester, New York and that it had also commenced proceedings at the International Trade Commission, a federal body that can ban imports if they infringe US patents.

The patents in question are related to technology for transmitting images. Kodak says Apple’s iPad and iPhone are using this technology as are HTC’s smart phones and tablets.

The timing of the suit is curious in that Kodak’s patent portfolio has been a hot issue for months. Analysts have said selling or licensing the patents may be the 131-year company’s only hope of effecting a turnaround after years of decline. The new lawsuits will not produce any cash in the near future as patent proceedings typically take years. Today’s announcement may therefore a way to show the strength of the portfolio to potential buyers or it may be a threat to other companies using imaging technology to pay a licensing fee to Kodak.

In a separate announcement today, the company said it was implementing a management shake-up and cost-cutting measures (via Bloomberg). Kodak is rumored to be preparing a bankruptcy filing for early February that would permit it to shed debt and restructure.

» Kodak: Looks like Kodak investors might really have something to smile about: it is apparently now being eyed up as a breakup target, with a patent portfolio worth possibly $3 billion, against the whole company currently valued at only $576 million. (via Bloomberg)

» Nokia: The Finnish company has named its first mobile operator partner for its Windows Phone 7 launch, and it says everything about the company’s focus. It is China Mobile. (via Digital Trends)

» RIM/Samsung: Another speculation about how the Google/Motorola (NYSE: MMI) could spark a tie-up between these two (via Bloomberg)

» AT&T: The operator’s first LTE devices will be launched with the 4G network’s debut on August 21. (via eWeek)

» NSN: After failing to find a buyer for Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Siemens Networks, its JV shareholders will need to inject €1 billion ($1.4 billion) into the company to restructure it. (via Dow Jones/Morningstar)

» T-Mobile USA/BlackBerry: The operator today begins to sell the BlackBerry Bold 9900 nationwide. T-Mobile is calling the device its first 4G BlackBerry smartphone. (via T-Mobile)

» Three UK: A relaunch of the UK mobile operator’s gaming effort, the browser-based Games Store. (press release)

» The9: The Chinese mobile gaming company has cut down is loss by nearly half to $11.7 million. (via Inside Mobile Apps)

Apple’s battle against Kodak has been a tit-for-tat of patent attacks and counter-attacks in both federal district courts and at the U.S. International Trade Commission. In this most recent ruling, the full five-commissioner ITC upheld a ruling by an ITC judge that Kodak was innocent of infringement. (All decisions by ITC judges are reviewed by the full five-member commission which oversees them.)

While it’s Apple’s complaint that has failed here, this particular patent fight was started by Kodak, which has been going after many phone manufacturers in court, arguing that their cameras infringe Kodak image-processing patents. According to a report in Reuters (NYSE: TRI) on Monday’s decision, Kodak expects to get $250 million to $350 million from patent licensing each year through 2013.

Apple’s loss against Kodak comes on the heels of Apple’s first real victory in the smartphone battles-a ruling late last week that Android-powered HTC phones infringe two Apple patents.

– iPhone 5: A new report from the analysts at Jefferies & Co. (via Forbes) predicts that the next iPhone to come from Apple will not be a major upgrade, but will instead feature incremental improvements on the current iPhone 4 on the market today. Read more here.

– Nokia/Ovi: Ovi didn’t become anything close to a household name for Nokia, and now it has decided to ditch it as its mobile services brand, as it gears up to take on a whole new set of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) brands in 2012. Full story here.

– Sony Ericsson/Clearwire: This was a curious side story to the whole slew of patent suits that have been criss-crossing the mobile industry. Sony Ericsson has dropped a lawsuit against Clearwire over its logo, which had claimed that Clearwire’s swirling circular design was too similar to its own. Sony Ericsson first decided to sue Clearwire back in 2009, when the two settled on using different color schemes, but the flames got fanned again this year when it was reported that Clearwire was getting ready to launch its own-branded handsets. In a hearing in the U.S., Clearwire — which is still trying to build out its national network, and has faced intermittent funding issues — said it was not planning to launch any devices after all. That, apparently, reduced the branding threat for Sony Ericsson. (via The Local)

– Kodak: Another legal case moves one step ahead. Kodak got a vote of confidence late last week when a judge at the International Trade Commission ruled that Kodak did not violate any Apple patents: the two have been countersuing each other over patents relating to digital cameras. This is only an initial ruling, though; the full ITC ruling will not come until September this year. Another judge is expected to make an initial ruling in Kodak’s case against Apple and RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) later this month. (via Reuters)

– Android: In a sidenote to all the events at Google’s I/O conference last week, the number of countries that can now make payments for apps in the Android Market has been extended to 131 countries from the 32 previously covered. As The Register points out, China (and Greenland) are both still outside the loop.

Kodak, which has gone after several mobile-phone companies over the past year, is now targeting an internet company, with its recent lawsuit against Shutterfly. And, more importantly, it could easily use those same patents to go after other companies in that space, from startups like SmugMug and Snapfish to larger entities like Google’s Picasa or Yahoo-owned Flickr.

Kodak has asserted five patents in the lawsuit against Shutterfly, which it claims are being infringed by various Shutterfly services, including the sales of prints and photobooks through its web site. It may find Shutterfly an unusually tough opponent, as the startup has a handful of its own patents and has hired top-notch patent lawyers. This week, Shutterfly counter-sued Kodak in a federal court in California.

A Kodak spokesman said the company “has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to develop leading technology enabling online imaging systems and services, and, as a result, we have more than 400 patents in this space alone, and thousands more in the broader imaging category. We are committed to protecting these assets from unauthorized use.” He added that Kodak considers Shutterfly’s patent counter-suit, filed against Kodak on Monday, to be nothing more than a litigation tactic.

The spokesman didn’t say whether Kodak plans to sue other photo-sharing websites.The online photo-sharing space includes dozens of small companies as well as a few heavyweights like Flickr and Facebook. The industry has seen a number of patent suits, most of them brought by so-called patent trolls that are just shell companies that own a few patents. Those lawsuits don’t carry the heft or threat of a suit brought by a well-resourced operating company like Kodak.

Earlier this year, Kodak brought lawsuits against Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) alleging infringement by various mobile phones put out by those two companies. This came shortly after Kodak settled two-year-old patent litigation against LG (SEO: 066570) and Samsung. Under those settlements, both Samsung and LG are paying Kodak an undisclosed amount of licensing money.

In the same SEC documents that announced it had filed a counter-suit, Shutterfly said it will vigorously defend itself against Kodak’s lawsuit.

It’s a common tactic for companies hit with a patent suit to try to gain leverage and defend itself by filing a counter-suit, either with its own patents or with acquired patents. Shutterfly’s patents are home-grown; in its suit, the smaller company says it has seven patents that are being infringed by Kodak’s Gallery Software.

Asked about approaches to partnerships, Eastman Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett told delegates at the Midem music conference in Cannes, France, on Saturday: “I really like the one we did with TweetPhoto – so much so that we took a piece of the company“.

The pair announced a “collaborative agreement”, one of the first products of which was a promotion that offers Kodak cameras to people who tweet “#KodakTweets”.

TweetPhoto competes with TwitPic and Yfrog in what is still a nascent arena – real-time photo-sharing to Twitter and some other social sites. Kodak is desperately trying to embrace not just digital cameras but also digital services, as its core physical-film and printer businesses slow down. Hayzlett said Eastman Kodak had gone from a $15 billion business to a $200 million one.

The TweetPhoto relationship isn’t a major strategic alliance – it’s just one of a range the company is likely to do, and such services haven’t yet proven themselves successful businesses. In the same space, Orange, trying to give its phone users a service to use on its network, also recently launched a TweetPhoto-style service, Snapshot.

TweetPhoto was co-founded by Rodney Rumford and Sean Callahan in March 2009.

Kodak’s future? “It looks very bright,” Hayzlett said. “When a company like KKR starts putting in hundreds of millions of dollars, they must see something that’s worth the investment.” Kodak took $700 million in debt from KKR in September (WSJ).

Problem is, Kodak has never managed to get Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) or RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) to agree to any licensing deals — meaning it’s not getting a cut of the billions of dollars worth of sales of two of the most popular camera-enabled smartphones. So it’s suing both companies for patent infringement.

Kodak first filed suit with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), claiming that Apple’s iPhones and RIM’s camera-enabled BlackBerry devices infringe on a tech patent it holds for image previews. Separately, it filed two other suits against Apple in a New York District Court over digital camera and computing technology patents overall.

In the ITC case (ZDNet has the pdf), Kodak is seeking a “limited exclusion order” preventing the importation of infringing iPhones and BlackBerry devices; in the District Court cases, it’s seeking damages from Apple, and hoping to “permanently enjoin” the company from further infringement.

The company says it has been trying to negotiate licensing deals with both Apple and RIM “for years,” and that it’s been forced to file the suits “to protect the interest of our shareholders and the existing licensees of our technology.” Kodak has deals with 30 other electronics companies, including LG (SEO: 066570), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Samsung. Release.

Kodak is asking for compensation for damages resulting from the companies