Polaroid Corp

Polaroid Corp., known to generations of consumers for its instant cameras and film, filed Friday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, unable to keep up with new digital technologies that have reshaped the photography world as it struggled with nearly $1 billion in debt. The widely expected move comes three months after Cambridge, Mass.-based Polaroid said it will miss payments to bondholders and explore strategic options, including a sale of the company.

Polaroid Corp., which took advantage of Russia's tradition of street vending to build a national marketing network, now derives nearly 7% of its total sales from its growing business in the formerly Communist country. "We saw business increasing in 1994 and we expect it to increase substantially in 1995," Lance Roulic, Polaroid's director of marketing and consumer goods in Russia, said in New York. Svetozor, or Shining Light, Polaroid's 65%-owned joint venture in Russia, was profitable in 1994.

Polaroid Corp., the company that invented and became synonymous with instant photography, may well defeat the takeover attempt launched last week by Roy Disney's Shamrock Holdings investment company. But, sadly enough, that's too bad. Because any management that Disney--nephew of the late Walt Disney--installed at Polaroid could probably help the company more than the guys who are there now.

An investment group led by Shamrock Holdings, a Burbank investment firm owned by Roy E. Disney and his family, disclosed Wednesday that it owns 8% of Polaroid Corp. and wants to buy the rest of the company for about $2.3 billion. The unsolicited, $40-a-share bid for the instant photography giant came only a week after Polaroid had unveiled an anti-takeover plan that included restructuring and a big shift in marketing strategy that includes selling conventional film for cameras.

Polaroid Corp., fighting off a hostile takeover bid by Shamrock Holdings, said Monday that it will spend $1.1 billion to buy back its own shares and will sell a minority stake for $300 million to a friendly investment fund. The moves may signal an end to Shamrock's six-month quest for the company. The Cambridge, Mass., instant photography giant also hinted that it may give shareholders some of the damages it recovers from Eastman Kodak in a major patent infringement case.

George Wheelwright III, a co-founder of the company that became Polaroid Corp., died Feb. 27 at a nursing home here. He was 97. Wheelwright joined with Edwin Land to develop a lens that could polarize light--technology that was the basis for glare-free sunglasses and instant photography. Born in Ware, Mass., Wheelwright and his brother Joseph, who became a noted Jungian psychiatrist, started a boys camp in Santa Barbara.

Truvel Corp. in Chatsworth said it signed an agreement with Polaroid Corp. to sell a Polaroid digital color film recorder and accessories. Truvel develops and manufactures a wide range of computer equipment.

A federal judge today awarded Polaroid Corp. $900 million in a patent infringement suit against Eastman Kodak Co. A court had ruled in 1985 that Kodak had infringed Polaroid's instant photography patents.

In a huge award that nonetheless disappointed some observers, Polaroid Corp. won $909 million Friday in a long-running instant photography patent-infringement suit against rival Eastman Kodak Co. U.S. District Judge A. David Mazzone in Boston, delivering a judgment topped only by the $10.3 billion awarded to Pennzoil Co. in a dispute against Texaco Inc. over an oil company takeover, ruled that Polaroid had lost profits of nearly $250 million because of Kodak's illegal actions.