This is just such a sad story.

In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, having succumbed to a digital revolution in photography that it had helped to start. But the company’s managers still hoped to escape from bankruptcy and have another shot at greatness by selling part of a portfolio of patents that experts valued as high as US $4.5 billion.

Eleven months later, those roughly 1700 patents (together with 655 patent applications) sold for just $94 million—less than the licensing fees Kodak had collected in its worst-ever year in recent history. What’s more, the company licensed its remaining 20 000 patents to a dozen leading technology companies for only $433 million, severely restricting future earnings from them.

Without its anticipated multibillion-dollar payoff, the company was forced to hand over its iconic photographic film and paper businesses, as well as potentially lucrative new technologies like digital printing kiosks, to a spin-off owned by its U.K. pension fund. In September 2013, Kodak finally limped out of bankruptcy, a shadow of its former self. The following month, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services assigned the slimmed-down Kodak a B– for corporate credit—a junk-grade rating.

Kodak is a great brand. Hate to see them go down like this.