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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Litepanels Initiates Legal Action to Stop Most LED fixtures from entering the United

I had only dealt with Lite Panels briefly and they put me off by the BS they feed everyone with a big spoon: by misrepresenting the power of their lights quoting "Rating 500W (compared with quartz-halogen) " for a single 1'x1'. Well, if that panel produces or consumes 500W of power or/and anything similar to a 500W photographic halogen lamp than I'm a Santa Clause. I was tempted to buy them and, after 11 months, return them with a sticker "doesn't work as specified - please fix it or provide full refund, thanks". I have very little respect to that company irrespective how good or bad their products really are.
 
Looks to me as though the Dedo TP-LONI-BI50HO Felloni 1x1 Bicolour High Output LED Light Head might be the current best bet, also the larger bicolor units from Cool lites looks good spec but Ive not seen any yet. Any view on Best LED panels.
 
Just a reflection about the 2 sides of the coin.

Case 1: No patent - After you have worked several years to get your product correctly out in the market - and now comes this nice anonymous guy from "faraway no law no rules country", gets some of your products, drives back home, disassembles your work and just takes the shortcut, time to market = 1/100. Obviously it will be cheaper, consumers love them... it all cost 1/3, but, its just stealing your work and getting the money for it - little counts how simple the invention !

Case 2: Get your patent, and as your existence is at stake, feel free to s..... the hell out of the violator. (I have patents too, so this is what I do - and unfortunately I have to, if not I am dead)

Regarding RED: Immagine they would have no patents, the EPIC would cost 1/3..., coming from "faraway land" - but the reality - there would be no EPIC, nobody would be so crazy to put 10 years of development in a product without possibility of protection.

Regarding the US patent office I agree, it has become a mess. 5 years to get something approved. I think the entire world needs a remake, not only the patent office. (off topic comment ... but I have to express)
 
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I agree patents need to be recognised and respected for vaild IP. Its some ones property and shouldnt be stolen.

However Im not sure about the generally coverage thats mentioned in this thread suggesting that a LED light panel on a stand constitutes a valid patentable idea if that is whats at stake here. Were that to be the case may be we should join hands and submit a patent for a candle on a stand which when lit emanates a nice light which to film by. Even if we did I think it wouldnt be a good move and wrong. I think patents really need to be specific and unique which so far as I recall was the original idea of them. If its more specific concent about what makes the LED emit continuous spectrum or what ever then I do think its valid.

One thing is for sure the lawyers are all about to get richer at our collective expense and theres plenty enough rich lawyers already with due respect to them all.
 
For those that want to know more about how badly the patent system is broken and the failure of the politicians to fix this.
Here is a recent 6 page article describing the conflicting interests of various businesses regarding the patent system and how they try to buy the support from politicians to cover their "special interests".
Also a good insight in how the system of "Patent Trolls" work.

The Spoilsmen: How Congress Corrupted Patent Reform

Today, the patent bill looks like a scorecard tallying points for powerful corporations: a win for pharmaceutical companies whose monopolies are driving up Medicare costs; a win for Wall Street's battle against check-processing patents; a loss for tech giants who had hoped to curb costly lawsuits.

Left out of the tally is the public, even as the economic landscape for American families grows darker. Historian Richard Hofstadter famously observed that Congress during the Gilded Age busied itself with dividing the nation's spoils among the rich and powerful. But as the current patent struggle suggests, the spoilsmen are back and Washington is once again an arbiter of who lands the lucre.

"Congress has lost any capacity to piece together these private interests into a public-welfare-promoting change to the patent system," says Christopher Sprigman, an intellectual property expert at the University of Virginia Law School. "It's really not about optimization anymore, it's about which faction is going to win out."

When legislators first introduced a patent bill in 2005, they designed it to lower the costs of lawsuits burdening Internet and software companies. Lured by the big, juicy settlements to be won by suing huge companies for intellectual property theft, an entire industry had emerged around patent chasing alone. These so-called "patent trolls" don't produce any goods. Instead, they secure unclaimed patents for ideas in use and try to cash out in court.

Trolls file hundreds of lawsuits a year over "low quality" patents -- lobbyist legal jargon for the questionable or downright bizarre patents routinely granted by the understaffed Patent and Trademark Office. In recent years, patents have been approved for products including a wheeled flower pot (patent No. 7,908,942), the crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich (patent No. 6,004,596), a decorative box that can be placed in a casket (No. 7,908,942) and an accounting scheme that helps people dodge taxes by moving stock options around (No. 6,567,790). Once approved by the patent office, it's difficult and costly to overturn the patent in courts, which grant significant deference to the office's decisions.

The legislative attempt to crush patent trolls ignited a byzantine war in the nation's capital between powerful interests -- tech giants, drug companies, even too-big-to-fail banks -- sweetening the pot for politicians sitting at the center of it all in Washington.
Click to expand...

:furious3:​
 
Dave Blackham said:
I agree patents need to be recognised and respected for vaild IP. Its some ones property and shouldnt be stolen.

However Im not sure about the generally coverage thats mentioned in this thread suggesting that a LED light panel on a stand constitutes a valid patentable idea if that is whats at stake here. Were that to be the case may be we should join hands and submit a patent for a candle on a stand which when lit emanates a nice light which to film by. Even if we did I think it wouldnt be a good move and wrong. I think patents really need to be specific and unique which so far as I recall was the original idea of them. If its more specific concent about what makes the LED emit continuous spectrum or what ever then I do think its valid.

One think is for sure the lawyers are all about to get richer at our collective expense and theres plenty enough rich lawyers already with due respect to them all.
Click to expand...

Dave, I agree with your point, but unfortunately I believe we have lost all our "common sense" and now this is what we have. It should not be possible to patent a light on a stand, but the specific elements behind the lights on a stand, spectrum, flicker, special designs etc... Anyhow a patent is as good as enforceable in a court. Reality is, and you well expressed your point, the biggest business goes to the bureaucrats and lawyers.
 
Dave Blackham said:
Looks to me as though the Dedo TP-LONI-BI50HO Felloni 1x1 Bicolour High Output LED Light Head might be the current best bet, also the larger bicolor units from Cool lites looks good spec but Ive not seen any yet. Any view on Best LED panels.
Click to expand...

I have both and they are both great.
 
Someone Needs a Reality Check on this Thread

Someone Needs a Reality Check on this Thread

Aside from most people jumping to conclusions without a modicum of knowledge about the facts in the Lite Panels case, if what Lite Panels is saying is true, more power too them. Guys, Jim et al at Red have taken a big risk, they put their money on the line, and most of you would say they have the right to hopefully make some big bucks in return. I know I do. So why the cudos for Red management and a club for Lite Panels? Do any of you really know how much time and energy Lite Panels may have spent on their project. As an inventor, I want to have the broadest patent possible. That's good business. How much time and money I spent on developing it is not an issue. If the patent office grants them more than they should have received, don't get angry at Lite Panels, get angry at the patent office.

I'm guessing most of you out there would be outraged if someone copied your film, gave you no royalities and no credit. What's the difference here? Theft of IP is theft of IP.

What's going to be your position when the Chineese reverse engineer Epic and start selling them for $9,000 or whatever? BOYCOTT RED!!! I doubt it.

(What's going to be interesting is who's going to win out in the patent war between ARRI, Sony, Red and whomever. We all think Red was first to the table, but that isn't necessarily a fact.)

Stay tuned.

Buy American
 
BREAKING NEWS:

U2 sues Litepanels for copying the idea of "square panels containing a 2-dimensional grid of LEDs for entertainment and lighting purposes"

PopMart tour - 1997. Anyone think of any more prior art?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
If incandescent lights can be arranged in an array, then an LED array is not even slightly original.

Check out the old "9 Light Mole Fay". Even a Plasma TV is an Array.

Even a "Lite Bright" toy is an array of lights. What the hell has "LitePanels" patented?

:)
 
Frankly the idea has been around far longer than lite panels and is executed in far superior ways. And the patent game is well known. More madness for the lawyers that we all pay for.
 
Look, the idea of putting a bunch of lights on a grid is not new or revolutionary in any way. See 9 lights by mole. Or maxi brutes or dinos or any of the chicken coop lights made by gaffers. I can't see this standing up in court for a hot minute. Methinks the lightpanels folks should spend more effort on coming up with new products and designs.
 
From today´s Dilbert strip:
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Posting a Dilbert strip is Copyright Infringement. Ha ha.

Perhaps there will be a Fair Use for Patents one day.

:)
 
Istead of spending hundreds of thousands of $ sueing other small companies, they might as well just lower their terribly high prices, that would help them sell more and make them more popular at the same time...
A patent for putting a LED array on a stand and use is for TV, seriously ? That just sounds like BS and patent troll to me. If they issue a patent for their new fresnel LED lights, this I could understand, but for simple LED arrays, no way...

I'll keep using Cool Lights fixtures which are great and fairly priced. Might even buy some more to support them, and avoid renting Litepanels anymore.
 
Nils Ruinet said:
I'll keep using Cool Lights fixtures which are great and fairly priced. Might even buy some more to support them, and avoid renting Litepanels anymore.
Click to expand...

+1 for Cool Lights... great fixtures, great to deal with, MUCH more economical than Litepanels.

On the patent discussion: In order for a patent to hold up, the idea must be non-obvious. There is a deeper legal definition of what qualifies as non-obvious, but suffice it to say that these LitePanels patents are HIGHLY questionable. I can't claim to have done an in-depth analysis, but on the surface, it certainly looks like heavy-handed / ill-conceived action on Litepanels part. I was already avoiding their products because their prices are ludicrous, but I admit I did pick up a little Obie from them a couple of years ago... those are the last dollars I intend to give them.
 
In the mid 1990s I bought one of the first white LEDs and did some test shoots. Dang, I should have patented the idea of using LEDs for film lighting purposes.

(Totally irrelevant, but the results were all over in terms of colour temperature, but I used a b/w still framegrab from the PD100 as background for my Psion Camerassistant software.)
 
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