Red is Suing Nikon for infringing on video compression patents

[Jonathan Keane]

https://nikonrumors.com/2022/05/26/...s-video-compression-patents.aspx/#more-170272

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Not good...

 

[Han Vogen]

You didn’t exactly need a crystal ball to see that coming.

 

[rand thompson]

RED Takes Legal Action Against Nikon Over RAW Patents

by CineD

Article
https://www.cined.com/red-takes-lega...r-raw-patents/

RED Suing Nikon over Video Compression Patent with Z9 2.0 Update

by Newsshooter

Article
https://www.newsshooter.com/2022/05...-video-compression-patent-with-z9-2-0-update/

 

[Zack Birlew]

Well, this was a morning wakeup! After looking at what's being said, it seems to come down to the RED patent of bayer pattern compressed RAW video in a camera versus Nikon's use of internal RAW video in the Z9 despite using the TicoRAW compression scheme. Unlike previous cases, to my ears, this sounds like a razor thin argument as TicoRAW could be just different enough to put Nikon's RAW video in its own category. On the other hand, RED's patent could encompass the entire tech of compressed RAW video in general but I don't know if this has been proven to be the case in the previous cases as those often dealt more with the issue of the RED patent's validity as a patent more than the other companies being caught using bayer compressed RAW in their products despite RED's patent.

The trouble I see here is if RED can't prove that the TicoRAW tech violates their patent then EVERYBODY will start using TicoRAW until RED's patent expires and I wouldn't be surprised if there were a blitz via firmware to add or re-enable internal RAW via a TicoRAW codec to cameras that lost RAW due to previous RED cases. Looking at how quickly Nikon, Canon, and others are matching up and in ways exceeding Komodo and V-Raptor's features for a fraction of the price, I think RED would be in a pretty bad state if all the upcoming low to mid-tier 8K 24p/30p - 4K 120p mirrorless refresh cameras ended up getting TicoRAW. This may be what is at stake if they don't file a suit at this point and the same worry comes from BRAW but that hasn't gone out to other cameras en masse as of yet.

I think that what this may really show is that the Z9 does touch the digital cinema game a lot closer than RED, Sony, or ARRI would have liked and trounces all of them on the price to performance ratio and all while being primarily a photography camera. I've said it before, if choosing a camera today, I could not in good conscience choose a used RED Epic Dragon 6K, a RED Helium 8K, or even a RED Komodo 6K with cameras like the Nikon Z9, Canon R5/C, and the URSA 12K out there, it no longer makes sense for the price and features. Even with the V-Raptor, I see no practical reason to opt for that over these options either, all of them have been shown to match very closely with the same lighting setups when using RAW, whether internal or external, and aside from the big boy URSA 12K, the Z9 is not all that big if size is a consideration. Unless RED drops the Komodo and V-Raptor price down to compete with these smaller cameras, they're riding on branding and the Hollywood studio system for the time being until some movies start being made with the Z9 and others. For all practical filmmaking purposes, the Z9 ticks a lot of boxes once you add maybe a cage and an external monitor because all audio would be handled externally and it's small enough to put on a gimbal and maybe even certain medium sized drones and all you need is N-RAW with 24p and you're set for a very versatile 8K full frame mirrorless digital cinema experience.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out and while we have to respect RED defending its patents, there may be more at stake with this particular lawsuit than we realize.

 

[Phil Holland]

tech

I mean we'll see what the lawyers and all that have to say, this is a well known patent at this point and certainly well covered terrain here on this site.

In terms of the TicoRAW tech itself, the front page of their website alludes to that this is obviously violating the patent's guidelines as it pertains to using it within the Z9.

That all said, I do like the Z9. Nikon's best to date in terms of camera. Wrong form factor and missing a few critical features to really compete properly in this space, but that's the the normal regarding mirrorless and hybrid cameras.

 

[Mestizo Devon]

So..... Where are we going here? What happens in 6 years or so? Is Red not able to survive on hardware? It seems as if the codec it the show stopper.... So why not license it out make it the industry standard codec (think Arri hardware to Hollywood). The codec everyone uses no matter the hardware. How many more cameras will Red produce before the patent is up? Now maybe this is already in play, yet I see many legal battles when kissing the ring would suffice... I say this as a long time Red supporter, it looks like the innovation and true indy spirit has run low. I'd like to see more of what created Komodo than legal cockblocking. I'd like to think there is much more to the show....

 

[Patrick Tresch]

RED also has a patent on modules...

 

[Han Vogen]

So..... Where are we going here? What happens in 6 years or so? Is Red not able to survive on hardware? It seems as if the codec it the show stopper.... So why not license it out make it the industry standard codec (think Arri hardware to Hollywood). The codec everyone uses no matter the hardware. How many more cameras will Red produce before the patent is up? Now maybe this is already in play, yet I see many legal battles when kissing the ring would suffice... I say this as a long time Red supporter, it looks like the innovation and true indy spirit has run low. I'd like to see more of what created Komodo than legal cockblocking. I'd like to think there is much more to the show....

Firstly, no one can stand on hardware alone. Hardware is only a piece of the puzzle. The other part is the software that makes it all work.

As for where Red will be in 6 years… I would imagine they are working on the successor to the current implementation of RAW as we speak. I don’t think they are unaware of their patent expiration date.

When / if the new patent comes out… after god knows how many thousands of hours of work and millions of dollars spent… I’m certain many will gather around to decry that it should be “free for all”… and that Red are “cockblocking” progress.

Red runs a business not a charity. This lawsuit is not a vendetta, it’s just business.

 

[Michael Hastings]

SNIP...
Red runs a business not a charity. This lawsuit is not a vendetta, it’s just business.

Agree it's just business.

But it has always seemed to me to be a less than legitimate patent in that there was previous still compressed raw, Cineform Raw and mostly that it seemed to be fairly obvious that you would try to compress the raw data to minimize storage and transfer bandwidth - and all manner of digital data compression have been around for decades - all of which in my mind should have negated the patent.

But it seems that patent courts haven't enforced "obviousness" for a long time. And I think a lot of people have seen the patent this way - not that they believe everything should be "free for all".

After the Jinnimag saga, the Hydrogen debacle (and some other things that have never been made public) - it sometimes feels like RED takes the "business is war" attitude a little far - doing some things that are a little underhanded maybe and maybe a bit of a "patent troll" as well.

Take this for what it's worth - it doesn't negate all the good things RED has done - but it's just another tick on the aggravation/dislike meter that really does exist in the overall production community and affects the overall value and viability of the products we have purchased from RED.

 

[Mestizo Devon]

I guess I just see it as focus on what made us love Red, the great gear, yes the backend is important...
Instead make it easy for the others to get to RAW (RED gets paid) a little bit from them all....
Red will not stop progress, but in trying they are cockblocking themselves....

 

[Han Vogen]

I see many using the term “patent troll”.
A patent troll acquires a patent with no intention of ever using the patent in any product that they produce. The product is the patent, which they then sell or license for a fee.

Red uses their patent in every camera that they make. They clearly are not licensing it to Nikon, DJI or Kinefinity. Weather or not you like Red’s stance, by definition they are definitely not patent trolls.

Who is right or wrong is for the courts to decide.

 

[Michael Hastings]

I see many using the term “patent troll”.
A patent troll acquires a patent with no intention of ever using the patent in any product that they produce. The product is the patent, which they then sell or license for a fee.

Red uses their patent in every camera that they make. They clearly are not licensing it to Nikon, DJI or Kinefinity. Weather or not you like Red’s stance, by definition they are definitely not patent trolls.

Who is right or wrong is for the courts to decide.

Thanks for clarifying the term but I think you know what I mean and that's why I said "maybe a bit of". It just seems that RED seems to patent everything under the sun and "maybe" some things that shouldn't be patentable but not worth anyone trying to fight Jim's lawyers. I realize that everyone does it to an extent, it's just a matter of degree and it's to a degree that I don't like all that much since I've been on the receiving end of ridiculous patent suits that didn't hold up but took years to resolve and just a pain in the .ss and expensive.

And on the other end - since I was the first to ever manufacture and market a totally self contained i.e. camera and recorder in the same housings underwater video system when all previous underwater video required a cable to the surface to record - that I could have patented the whole concept. But I didn't because it seemed ridiculous and obvious to me. Maybe that cost me a few million in lost licensing and more in sales, but it seems to me that integrity means doing what you think is right in spite of lost profits.

 

[James Darren]

but it's just another tick on the aggravation/dislike meter that really does exist in the overall production community and affects the overall value and viability of the products we have purchased from RED.

What you said...
RED as a company isn't very well liked in the world I work in and things like this don't help their cause.

 

[Phil Holland]

During the trials and tribulations leading to utter lunacy the last time patents came up here, let me just say that the main 6 players in our industry all hold patents, some far more "obvious" than even internal actual RAW recording, at the time not-so-obvious however. But that was a vibrant era and in the span of about 3-5 years of rapid developments in digital cinema, somebody was going to get there first. Though we are in the entertainment industry, all of these companies are technology companies. And the lay of the land is spending time to develop such things, lock them down to create IP, and license or sell the technology as the companies see fit.

Normally companies go through a process to interact with each other to see if mutual or profitable ground can be found, sometimes not if there's a conflict of interest or whatever. All the companies want to make money however. And we certainly know there are patent deals across all of the camera we use at this point, too much tech in them that overlaps to be otherwise. When we see something like this pop up it's due to one company not going through the proper avenues either blissfully unaware or otherwise. I would imagine otherwise in this case as this is has been contested in the past.

I wouldn't dare make a spotlight (seemingly obvious, but perhaps not) in 2022 without taking appropriate measures to communicate with all those who have overlapping recent patents and those that have expired long ago.

An interesting one to follow is what ARRI is looking to overturn as of September 2021. I don't know the specific patents they are looking into, but there was a time when I was designing a motion picture light and I did indeed see a few oddities and then again some valid patents. I'd love to see each patent they are actually trying to overturn as "lighting" is a tough and broad technology with application well beyond our industry.

A well known accessory company was recently hit by a patent troll over the use of the figure eight in a mechanical design, which caused a product revision, ironically leading to a better design. That I would say might be more troll-ish than not based on what I read up on.

To a point, there's lots of stuff happening in terms of legalities, patents, and more that have an impact on our industry when you broaden the scope out to sound, software, and even very basic equipment.

Our whole industry is driven by intellectual property. Every production you've ever worked on is exactly that. Every dollar that has come in whether it's a commercial, unscripted series, or whatever is born of it. Studios even wait for certain things to "clear" so they can jump on them once they are in bounds. And it is fun when we see a little race to production trends when things like werewolves, volcanos, or magicians are suddenly in fashion. Not the same movies, but certainly the same general starting place and genre.

On a complete side note, I do find it humorous when the little guy (company size and revenue) is vilified when fighting for their technology against vastly larger companies and groups. RED's had to fight this twice that we even know of against multi-billion dollar companies, and this one adds to that list. Often times I feel like many people forgot exactly how things were in the 90s and 2000s as well as what led to all of that. Remember 4K wasn't supposed to happen until 2015/2016 for our little industry and when it did it was going to be $300K a camera easily. Don't think it would have actually played out that way as somebody else would have swooped in, but that was the big companies plan back then.

 

[Remington Chase]

What's a "complete side note"? was that the point? if not, what was?

 

[James Darren]

On a complete side note, I do find it humorous when the little guy (company size and revenue) is vilified when fighting for their technology against vastly larger companies and groups. RED's had to fight this twice that we even know of against multi-billion dollar companies, and this one adds to that list.

RED is hardly a little guy. It was started and owned by a multi billionaire who's estimated worth is $3billion

 

[richard peterson]

Im currently testing a z9, monstro VV and Arri mini LF. The z9 is really amazing. The 8k 60fps is so good. The build quality is top, the z9 is weather sealed. It seems they used the space/weight gained by loosing the mirror box to do some serious cooling magic. No fan and no over heating so far. I keep asking how is this a thing. The auto focus for video is great too. the z9 has a feature where you can define the size and shape of the auto focus area and store these shapes in multiple custom presets, a useful setting for me is to make it a wide screen aspect (horizontal or vertical) about half the total width of the gate and place it say in the upper third. Then inside that defined region it does it’s Auto focus subject identification, the 3D tracking for video is good too, but you have to touch the screen to tag the subject you would like to track; the auto focus system is totally useable but their are a lot of settings and it takes a moment to get the lay of the land. Dual slots are nice. The buttons light up for use in the dark, When it writes a raw file it also makes an H264 file so you can offline or share right away, So much to love about the z9. And the price Is 3k cheaper then my Arri viewfinder. Flip a switch and you have a best in class stills camera. It’s truly an awesome hybrid. I’m still testing but my biggest surprise is how good the color rendering is. I’ve heard that Nikon has good color but To tell the truth, so far I’m liking its color rendering better then the LF. The LF seems to handle overexposure a bit better, but proper exposed and the z9 often is the best of the three But again it’s still early testing and just my initial reaction. I’ll try to share raw source files soon from all 3 cameras and you can judge for yourself, Boot time is like 2 seconds, I hope they add anamorphic support at some point.

 

[Jon Pais]

RED is hardly a little guy. It was started and owned by a multi billionaire who's estimated worth is $3billion

Everything’s relative, right? Apple’s got a war chest of $67 - $100b and an army of 500 attorneys to battle it out in court, and they’ve successfully had over 200 patents overturned. Over the past decade alone, the patent board has eagerly tossed out 2,000 patents for powerful conglomerates like Apple and Alphabet - an activity so shocking that it prompted the Supreme court to investigate the constitutionality of the board itself.

Phil brought up an important point, which is the state of the industry at the time RED entered the scene. Many of the inflammatory comments we see on other websites fail to acknowledge how RED completely transformed digital cinema at a time when most cameras were still shooting HD with three chips, recording interlaced video; the image created by that system was soft, necessitating processing that improved sharpness but which also introduced unwanted artifacts; and using tiny sensors that couldn’t reproduce the shallow depth of field characteristic of film. Another important feature of the RED sensor was how it recreated the texture of film with noise that is very organic, something that still distinguishes RED from many other cameras on the market to this day.

RED was the very first company to allow owners to upgrade their sensor, to the new Dragon 6K sensor – right on the showroom floor at NAB! So RED put a lot of innovation aside from compressed raw into their RED ONE. RED anticipated HDR long before other manufacturers jumped on board. Many forget that at the time Jim Jannard was taking deposits on the new camera how many industry professionals claimed the RED was vaporware. The RED ONE was also 1/3 the cost of the least expensive cinema camera at the time. It is only natural that a company up against some of the most powerful businesses in the field of cinema would want to protect their IP. It turns out their fears weren’t unwarranted, as a former VP of marketing and product development at ARRI pleaded guilty to corporate espionage. It didn’t end there, either. Apparently, the same individual spead falsehoods and disparaged the company under a pseudynm on RED’s very own forum, reduser.net.

Lastly, the lucrative photography and video websites that ran the story of RED vs Nikon failed in their responsibilty to correct blatant falsehoods in the comments section, for fear of alienating their readership and losing out on the huge amount of revenue generated by the obtrusive ads that clutter their websites. If anyone thinks that’s not their job, then why do the same moderators bother to occasionally respond to comments to explain how compressed raw is different and other technical details. You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many claiming Graeme’s patent was obvious don’t even understand what raw is! hehe

 

[Phil Holland]

RED is hardly a little guy. It was started and owned by a multi billionaire who's estimated worth is $3billion

$4.4b, but who's counting. I don't exactly think Jim sunk every dime and liquidated all his assets to start the company either.

But yes, apples to apples, that's still a fair difference form the $30b-$80+b in REVENUE coming in from larger companies, but nonetheless....