Bangalore: Eastman Kodak, the innovator in the field of photography, is, according to the Wall Street Journal, getting ready for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The 131 year old company has also reportedly started talking to major banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. for a “debtor-in-process financing” of around $1 billion, in case an effort to sell more than 1100 digital imaging patents doesn’t work out.

The imaging giant has a number of innovations to its credit, including the inventions of the first film that was designed to record motion pictures with sound, and the digital camera in 1975. The company’s sales overreached the $10 billion mark in 1980, and it launched a website in 1997 to upload and share pictures online.

However, the company had been entrenched in competition, the first taste of which it got in the 1980’s, when foreign competitors entered the film market. After a number of trials in other avenues such as the chemical and medical testing industries, Kodak settled for consumer and commercial printing, only to face new competition from Hewlett Packard and Canon. With the demand for traditional film falling, the company stopped investing in film in 2003. The digital camera enterprise seemed lucrative for Kodak, till Smartphones with hi-end cameras came into existence.

The company at its highest in 1997, had a stock market value of about $30 billion, but is now at $145 million. It lost 88 percent of its net worth in the market last year, and is presently down to 47 cents a share, according to Forbes.

According to Business Week, Antonio Perez, Kodak’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, is focusing on the printing business in an attempt to turn the company’s course around. He apparently seeks to fund the company for the while, by selling its patents, as well as other business units.