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Embattled photography pioneer Eastman Kodak Co. is nearing the end of a high-stakes patent-infringement fight with smartphone giants Apple Inc. and Research in Motion Ltd.

The 131-year-old Rochester, N.Y.-based company argued in a January 2010 lawsuit that image-preview technology it patented in 2001 was infringed by iPhone maker Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. of Ontario, Canada.

Chief Executive Antonio Perez estimates Kodak could draw up to $1 billion from its deep-pocketed rivals if it gets a favorable ruling Thursday before the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C.

Because the federal agency can block imports of patent-infringing products, Apple and RIM could be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees to bring in smartphones made overseas.

Both Apple and RIM have declined to comment on the case.

A triumph for Kodak would also lift some pressure on the maker of cameras, film, photo kiosks and inkjet printers as it struggles to redefine itself as a 21st-century powerhouse in digital imaging.

Its dispute with Apple and RIM centers on technology Kodak created for extracting a still image while previewing it in the camera’s LCD screen. In 2009, the trade commission ruled that South Korean mobile phone makers Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics infringed the same patent, resulting in $964 million in payouts.

Kodak has amassed more than 1,000 digital-imaging patents since the 1970s, and almost all of today’s digital cameras rely on those inventions. It has licensed digital technology to at least 30 companies, including mobile-device makers such as Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp.

Mining its rich array of inventions for repeated cash infusions has become an indispensable tactic driven in large part by Kodak’s long and painful digital turnaround.

Since 2004, Kodak has reported only one full-year profit _ in 2007 _ and anticipates another annual loss this year before crossing back to profitability sometime in 2012. It has trimmed its work force to 18,800 from 70,000 in 2002.

Kodak has a promising array of new businesses, but it needs to tap other sources of revenue before investments in those areas have time to pay off.

It is hoping four growth businesses _ consumer inkjet printers, high-speed commercial inkjet presses, workflow software and packaging _ will more than double in size to nearly $2 billion in revenue in 2013, accounting for 25 percent of all sales.

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Strong quarterly results from Nike are helping to push stocks sharply higher.

The shoemaker gained 6 percent after beating analysts’ expectations. Retailers rose on signs that consumers are still spending.

A small lift in home prices and progress in Greece toward avoiding a default also lifted stocks.

Stock indexes have fallen from their April highs on concerns that the economy is slowing. Tuesday’s gain was the second in two days.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 145 points, or 1 Business Card Holders.2 percent, to close at 12,189. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 17, or 1.3 percent, at 1,297. The Nasdaq rose 41, or 1.5 percent, to 2,729.

Four stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was relatively light at 3.2 billion shares.

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Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn unveiled an ambitious six-year plan for growth Monday, including a target of boosting the carmaker’s share of the global auto market to 8 percent.

Nissan Motor Corp. hopes to reach the market share target in the fiscal year ending March 2017, in part by focusing on growth in countries such as China, Brazil, Russia and India.

Nissan had a record 5.8 percent market share in the fiscal year ended March 2011.

“We are definitely on the offensive,” Ghosn said at the automaker’s Yokohama headquarters.

The plan underlines how Nissan is readying for expansion despite the production disruptions from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that are projected to drag profit down 15.4 percent to 270 billion yen ($3.4 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2012.

The maker of the March subcompact, Leaf electric vehicle and Infiniti luxury models is not being deterred by the recall woes at Toyota Motor Corp., which were blamed on overly rapid expansion.

Ghosn, who also heads Nissan’s alliance partner Renault SA of France, said Nissan was in good shape to go on the growth track because it now had no “handicap” in cash reserves, market presence or product lineup.

The business plan also includes a focus on Nissan’s trademark green technology, the electric vehicle. The automaker expects cumulative electric vehicle sales of 1.5 million vehicles for the Renault-Nissan alliance by the fiscal year ending March 2017.

Nissan will have a production capacity of 1.2 million vehicles in China by 2012, becoming Nissan’s single largest global market, it said. Nissan aims to boost its market share in China to 10 percent under the six year plan from the current 6.2 percent.

Nissan also hopes to boost its operating profit margin to 8 percent over six years from the current 6 guaranteed high risk personal loans.1 percent.

“We will accelerate our growth, bringing more innovation and excitement to our products and services as well as cleaner, more affordable cars for everyone around the world,” said Ghosn.

But some were skeptical.

Mamoru Katou, auto analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research, said Nissan sees an opportunity to boost its presence while rivals Toyota and Honda Motor Co. are ailing from disaster-related problems. But he said they will also be recovering soon.

“It’s true it has momentum,” he said of Nissan’s plans to raise production capacity around the world. “But Toyota and Honda will be back, and competition will intensify.”

Japan’s No. 2 automaker said last week that it plans to sell more cars around the world at 4.6 million vehicles in the current fiscal year, up 9.9 percent and a record for Nissan. Sales revenue is expected to edge up 7.1 percent to 9.4 trillion yen ($117.5 billion).

Ghosn, who took over Nissan when it was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy in the late 1990s, said the first few years had been devoted to cost cuts and salvaging Nissan.

That was followed by a period of growth in the early part of last decade. Then the company had to invest in new headquarters and plants, and is now ready to reap the benefits of that in the years ahead, he said last week.

Like other Japanese automakers, Nissan suffered production disruptions in Japan because of parts shortages after the March quake and tsunami destroyed key suppliers. The automaker says it has mostly recovered and will be back to normal by October.

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France has halted the sale of three types of seeds linked to a British company after an E. coli outbreak caused the hospitalization of eight people.

French health officials say test results on two of the eight people hospitalized show an infection of the same strain of E. coli that killed 44 people _ all but one in Germany _ and sickened more than 3,700.

Commerce Minister Frederic Lefevre said late Friday the order involves fenugreek, mustard and arugula seeds linked to a British seed and plant vendor, Thompson & Morgan.

An investigation by France’s competition, consumption and fraud prevention agency found two of the eight people hospitalized had consumed sprouts from the three seeds at a school fair in the southwestern town of Begles.

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Retailers never give up fighting the bad guys.

They’re adopting new technologies to protect against credit card fraud and counterfeit bills. Distribution centers are putting smaller, harder-to-detect GPS devices in cargo shipments. Ink-dispensing and alarm-setting bulky tags still keep some goods from walking out the door. There’s even an alarm tag that can go into the meat soaker pad under a packaged T-bone steak.

“Oh yes, food and alcohol are high-theft items,” said Karen Bomber, marketing director at Tyco Retail Solutions, one of the companies pushing its wares last week at the retail industry’s loss prevention conference in Grapevine, Texas.

Retail theft keeps rising. Last year, retailers lost $37.14 billion, or 1.58 percent of sales, up from 1.44 percent in 2009, according to the National Retail Federation and Richard Hollinger, University of Florida professor of criminology payday loan no faxing.

The biggest share of those losses, 44 percent, was from employee theft. Shoplifting was second, with 33 percent, Hollinger said. Administrative errors, vendor fraud and unknown causes made up the rest.

The results are based on survey responses from 124 companies. Almost 19 percent of employee theft cases involved collusion between internal and external sources, he said.

New technology is about to make some efforts to stop retail theft obsolete, though it won’t happen overnight. Take credit cards, said Joe LaRocca, the National Retail Federation’s loss prevention staff expert. “We’ve spent 20 years adding holograms, expiration dates, setting up authentication numbers to call before a new card can be used

ST. LOUIS

Europe sought Monday to put a firewall between the financial turmoil ravaging Greece and the destinies of Ireland and Portugal, the two other eurozone countries that have already received international aid.

The region’s finance ministers signed off on important changes to their bailout funds, which they hope will reinforce confidence in the eurozone’s struggling economies even though Greece’s crisis is at a new boiling point.

As Greece risked defaulting on its debt next month, market pressure was increasing on countries like Portugal, where borrowing rates hit record highs on Monday.

“Times are difficult, the reform fatigue is visible in the streets of Athens, Madrid and elsewhere, and so is the support fatigue in some of our member states,” said Olli Rehn, the European Union’s Monetary Affairs Commissioner.

But Rehn urged countries to press on with the austerity. “We are about to complete a decisive response to the worst crisis since the Second World War,” he added.

To boost market confidence, ministers agreed to raise their guarantees for bailout loans from the current rescue fund to euro780 billion($1.1 trillion) from euro440 billion, said Klaus Regling, who manages the Luxembourg-based fund. That will allow the fund to lend out a total of euro440 billion, up from about euro250 billion currently.

The European Financial Stability Facility, as the fund is known, requires significant over-guarantees to get a good credit rating and raise cash.

The increase had been agreed in principle in March, but putting it into force required states to almost double their commitments to the fund _ an unpopular move at a time when citizens in rich countries are increasingly frustrated with the cost of helping their weaker neighbors.

On top of that, the ministers also made an important change to their future rescue fund, which they hope will help already bailed-out countries regain access to debt markets.

The so-called European Stability Mechanism, which will come into force in mid-2013, when the EFSF expires, will not have preferred creditor status when it helps countries that have already been bailed out, said Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who also chairs the meetings of eurozone finance ministers.

That means the fund would not be repaid before any private creditors. Giving the fund preferred creditor status had been criticized for discouraging private investors, who would be last in line to be repaid in the case of a default.

The ESM kicks in at a time when Ireland and Portugal have to re-enter international debt markets and start raising some money again by selling bonds. However, investors will be reluctant to buy these bonds if they have a high risk of not being repaid if the economic situation in the two countries worsens again.

The ESM will retain preferred creditor status for bailouts for countries that have no previous support programs.

The International Monetary Fund said in a statement that further changes to the fund _ such as giving it the power to buy bonds of struggling countries on the open market _ were necessary and that “failure to undertake decisive action could rapidly spread tensions to the core of the euro area and result in large global spillovers.”

The warning came a day after eurozone finance ministers had delayed decisions on vital new loan money for Greece to heighten pressure on the country to pass more spending cuts and economic reforms.

Greece will have to wait until an extraordinary finance ministers meeting on July 3 to get the eurozone to sign off on a euro12 billion loan installment without which it would default on its massive debts by the middle of the month.

By then, the Greek parliament will have to pass austerity measures worth some euro28 billion as well as an unpopular euro50 billion privatization program. Its European creditors and the International Monetary Fund are also pushing for the main opposition party to support the measures, which have already sparked violent street protests and forced Prime Minister George Papandreou to reshuffle his Cabinet.

“The greatest weight of responsibility lies on the shoulders of the new Greek government” as well as the other main political forces in the country, said Rehn.

In talks that lasted into the early hours of Monday morning, the finance ministers also agreed to asks banks and other private creditors to share some of the burden of a second bailout for Greece, likely to be similar in size to the euro110 billion it was already granted a year ago. However, the ministers stressed that any private-sector involvement would have to be strictly voluntary and could not be considered a partial default by rating agencies.

Greece’s newly appointed finance minister Evangelos Venizelos said the eurozone’s decisions showed that urgent action was necessary in Athens. “We have plenty to do, on a daily basis,” he said in a statement. “The political time has been compressed a lot; each day is of extreme importance and hence we cannot afford to waste a single hour.”

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Target may be known for its cheap-chic apparel, but workers at one New York store say the company is just plain cheap.

Target says it pays its workers competitively. But late Friday night, about 250 workers at a Target store in Long Island were to vote on whether to join the country’s largest retail union. This is the first union vote Target has faced in two decades, and if workers vote “yes,” the store will be the first of the company’s 1,700 locations to bring in organized labor.

The vote could have a ripple effect in the U.S. retail industry as the economy recovers from the worst recession since the 1930s no fax payday loans. At a time when jobs are scarce, the retail industry is expected to be one of the strongest sectors for job growth during this decade. But the hours and pay for jobs selling clothes, computers and other goods have been declining in recent years. At the same time, the industry has faced decreasing union membership, which can limit workers’ ability to fight for better wages.

Chris Tilly, who directs the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, says a win for the union

World markets fell Friday despite positive economic data out of the U.S., as a political shake-up in Greece added to worries that the country might be forced to default on its debt.

Oil prices fell below $93 a barrel, while the dollar strengthened against the euro amid Greece’s debt woes. The greenback slipped against the yen.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closed 0.6 percent lower at 9,351.40, as export shares _ including autos and consumer electronics _ slid on a strengthening yen. Panasonic Corp. lost 1.3 percent, while Sharp. Corp. fell 1 percent. Honda Motors Corp. lost 0.9 percent.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 1.2 percent to 21,695.26. South Korea’s Kospi index was 0.7 percent lower at 2,031.93, with high-tech behemoths leading the slump. Samsung Electronics, the top global manufacturer of flat screen televisions, memory chips and liquid crystal displays, skidded more than 3.4 percent while computer memory chip leader Hynix Semiconductor tumbled 6.1 percent.

Australia’s S&P ASX 200 rose 0.1 percent to 4,484.90, but gains were muted by a slide in shares of Woodside Petroleum, which lost 3.8 percent after the company announced cost overruns and delays in its Pluto liquefied natural gas project. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia were also lower.

Mainland Chinese shares fell to their lowest level so far this year as investors reacted to news of a rise in the rate for Chinese central bank’s three-month bills on Thursday, seen as a cue that an interest rate hike may be in the offing.

The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.8 percent to 2,642.82, while the Shenzhen Composite Index fell 1.1 percent to 1,085.11. Shares in nonferrous and cement companies weakened.

“It seems like the darkest time when an interest rate hike is coming. Shares could rally after that, although the gains will be limited,” said Peng Yunliang, an analyst based in Shanghai.

Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co. plunged 10 percent following recent gains due to a policy change that gives the company a monopoly over northern China’s rare earths production, while Fujian Cement Inc. lost 2.5 percent.

Outside of China, the market dip was largely attributed to fears of a Greek default, which could push up borrowing costs elsewhere, lead to crises in other indebted countries, and hurt the European banks that hold a lot of Greek bonds loan for people with bad credit.

On Wall Street on Thursday, better-than-expected reports on home building and jobs pushed two of the three major stock indexes higher. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 0.5 percent to close at 11,961.52. The S&P 500 rose 0.2 percent to 1,267.64. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.3 percent to 2,623.70.

The pace of new home construction quickened last month and the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits fell last week to 414,000, more of an improvement than economists expected. Weekly applications for unemployment have been over 400,000 since April, a rate that suggests job growth is still slow.

Not all the economic news was positive. A survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that manufacturing slowed in that region, one day after a similar report found that manufacturing was slowing in the New York area. A series of weaker economic indicators over the past two months have led some analysts to trim their expectations for the year.

Benchmark oil for July delivery was down $2.23 to $92.74 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 14 cents to settle at $94.95 on Thursday.

The dollar dropped to 80.45 yen from 80.78 yen. The euro slipped to $1.4210 from $1.4141 late Thursday in New York.

The euro was being driven lower as worries grew that Greece could run out of money this summer because internal political chaos is preventing budget cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund. The common euro currency, used by 17 countries, was up to near $1.47 just a week ago.

On Friday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou replaced his finance minister in a government reshuffle intended to counter widespread anger over tough new austerity measures and to address demands for faster reform from Greece’s debt monitors at the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

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Borders has reached agreements with landlords to extend the leases on 11 stores it had previously asked bankruptcy court permission to close, according to court filings.

Last week the bookstore chain, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February, asked permission to start liquidating 51 stores because of a condition for its financing. But it said at the time it was actively working to keep them open.

Now Borders Group Inc. has 40 stores remaining on last week’s closing list. However, company said in documents filed Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York that it is continuing to negotiate with landlords and that number will likely shrink.

Borders also canceled an auction to select a liquidator for those stores because it is in talks with its creditors to eliminate the financing condition that requires it to close the stores loans for people with bad credit.

A hearing on the matter will be held June 20.

Borders had 642 stores before it entered bankruptcy protection and has closed 228, leaving just more than 400 in operation.

Earlier this month the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company said it is negotiating to sell some or all of its stores and could file a plan for that process within a few weeks.

Borders, which started with a single store in 1971, helped pioneer the book superstore concept along with Barnes & Noble Inc. but was brought down by heightened competition from discounters and online book sellers.

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