In this episode Terence and Philip discuss the legal action RED Digital Cinema has taken against Sony Corporation over a patent dispute.
In fairness to what is said in the show, RED have suggested they will have an interesting announcement(s) at NAB 2013.
Thanks to Curtis Fritsch for editing this and recent shows.
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Patents are supposed to be for significant innovations that are not prior work (even if not published or sold).
It seems to me using RAW format to record Bayer patterns at rates higher than 23 frames/second is just a combination of existing technology and is therefore trivial or at least obvious. Indeed all Sony has to show is that somebody in some lab had discussed such a scheme. They don’t even have to implement it to show it as a prior work.
Unfortunately the U.S. patent office is not diligent in granting patents. Obvious inventions are not supposed to be patentable. It costs millions of dollars in legal wrangling to overturn a patent, however. This is causing a mess in the software field, where I come from, where people patent the most obvious software that has clearly been done before. Shame companies then buy up these patents and then go around suing companies that are too small to fight back.
Hopefully RED has stuck its neck on the chopping block by suing a company that is big enough to throw big money at getting the patent invalidated. Like you say, I’m sure Sony has patents in its own arsenal throw back at RED, though if they do that then the patent won’t get invalidated.
Heavy duty lobbying by vested interests prevents any reform of the patent system.
You are correct. And Sony has already fired back. They are suing RED over 7 of their patents. RED has woken a sleeping giant, but I suspect this is what they wanted as it gets them buzz during NAB.