An acrimonious dispute between Kodak and file sharing service Shutterfly is threatening to spill over into rival image hosting sites after Kodak affirmed their commitment to protect its assets from “unauthorised use.”

This has seen Kodak initiate legal proceedings against Shutterfly over accusations that the photo sharing service has infringed Kodak’s patents regarding the central storage of images which can be ordered on line..

Kodak will now have to prove in court that the approximately 400 broad patents they own are applicable to specific digital technologies.

If successful there are likely to be follow up lawsuits aimed at similar sites such as Yahoo’s Flickr and Google’s Picassa, according to patent experts.

Kodak has been hard hit by the adoption of digital photography but is attempting to fight back by asserting its rights over those technologies which it believes infringe upon its patents.