Foiling the camera wise

Single-use digital cameras are now going on sale, but Pure Digital Technologies of San Francisco reckons we will reuse them without paying (W0 03/024083). Instead of film, recyclable digital cameras have a memory chip; instead of cracking open the camera to process the film, a high-street lab downloads the stored images, prints them for you and recycles the camera. PDT’s invention is a “use-limiting component” that stops people reusing the camera after downloading the images and making prints with a home computer. PDT’s system uses a non-standard port to connect to the picture memory and a proprietary digital coding routine…