Nikon has won a patent infringement lawsuit filed against Polaroid and another company. The lawsuit was related to a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera marketed by Polaroid, which Nikon claimed was very similar to one of its own cameras.

The Polaroid mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, the iM1836 was introduced recently, and at the very outset, it was obvious to many that the camera closely resembled the mirrorless camera that is part of the Nikon 1 series. Not surprisingly, Nikon filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Polaroid as well as Sakar, the company that manufactured the camera and licensed the Polaroid name. Recently, a court in New York ruled in favor of Nikon in this lawsuit.

As part of the agreement,Sakar has agreed not to sell the camera unless it makes a complete overhaul of the current configurations. Basically, the court has taken issue with the resemblance of the mirrorless camera marketed by Polaroid to the one that is manufactured by Nikon. However, the court’s decision does not mean that Polaroid or Sakar cannot go ahead and introduce another mirrorless interchangeable lens camera that is run on the Android platform.

Under the terms of the agreement overseen by the court, Sakar will no longer manufacture, advertise, sell or distribute the camera as contained in its present configuration. The Sakar website now no longer contains a page promoting the camera.

There was no direct threat of impacted sales to Nikon from the Polaroid mirrorless camera, because the latter was always seen as very inferior product that was a poor rip-off of the original Nikon 1model. However, the company found that there were sufficient patent infringement issues involved, to pursue this strongly.