Patent lawsuit...

[George Nelson]

...Sony is literally the giant and RED is the little guy with a slingshot...

How dare you are saying that! SONY is literally sleeping relaxed for years and RED is working hard to make a progress in motion picture industry! RED is not the little guy! RED is big and scary! Cause they care about picture quality.

I don't know if you are joking but I have a feeling that you miss understood what I was saying. Sony is a HUGE company with tons of resources and RED is a small company compared to them and this lawsuit is going to be tough.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The truth of the matter in any invention is, that it SEEMS to be OBVIOUS in retrospect.
cheers,
Detlev

Ummm, to be clear, compressing an image was not invented by RED. It was not only obvious, it was in practice. There's a big difference between coming up with something that's obvious and clever in retrospect, or clearly the best option after spending days/weeks/months/years eliminating everything that doesn't work and just being the first one to think to patent it. But compressing an image is like someone coming along and patenting scrambled eggs today because nobody bothered.

I get that patents need to be as broad as possible to cover your ass. But that also hasn't stopped ridiculous things from being patented. For instance, Digital Domain right now is trying to patent stereo conversion... stuff that's bread and butter compositing. Every single composite usually involves a clever application of nodes and filters to achieve a desired effect. If the non-obvious standard sinks too low then it won't be an "invention" it'll just be who has the money to and clout to afford IP lawyers to help you file. RED is a "small dog" compared to Sony but you're all small dogs compared to RED. If RED decided to patent the histogram as applied to RAW footage they could afford to file the patent. Then you would be locked into RED footage when using something we've used all along because they had the resources to patent it while you as an artist don't. Hopefully this is an instance of real innovation. But the tech industry has been burned numerous times already by + "... on a computer" patents.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

RED championed 4K and compressed RAW. We did it starting in 2006. It is curious that 6 years later... it now seems obvious. For the past 6 years, 1080P was "good enough" according to the biggest companies on earth. 4K was just not necessary. Given the proliferation of 4K panels at CES... apparently now we were right. And others are actually claiming to "have invented 4k". Really?
Jim

Ummm, Jim just a friendly reminder but you adopted "4k" and people knew what you meant *because* other people did "invent 4k" (which just sounds silly since you can't invent a number). I have a copy of combustion from 2000 (5 years before you even knew what 4k was) that has it as a resolution option. You've certainly delivered great tools to make it more affordable and widespread but "4k" was a thing before RED existed. In fact you had to defend *using* the name 4k when RED launched because people said you weren't good enough to claim to be "4k".

 

[Taylor Morrison]

"championed" past participle, past tense of cham·pi·on
Verb
Support the cause of; defend.

Websters

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

OK I chime in as well
Jim has the patent on 23fps or more video camera recording CMOS raw >2K and compressing before debayer.
What better and more fair way to validate it than going against a giant with army of very smart engineers and virtually unlimited resources?
If Sony can't invalidate it nobody can. And, therefore , it's valid.
If Sony can prove it invalid, they will, with extreme prejudice, no doubt about it. I can't think of a better stress test for a patent- for everyone. From the looks of it Jim is ready....
There is a third option, most likely actually- they'll reach a settlement in the back room somewhere. And we'll have no idea what it is....

 

[Peter Proniewicz-Brooks]

Ummm, to be clear, compressing an image was not invented by RED. It was not only obvious, it was in practice. There's a big difference between coming up with something that's obvious and clever in retrospect, or clearly the best option after spending days/weeks/months/years eliminating everything that doesn't work and just being the first one to think to patent it. But compressing an image is like someone coming along and patenting scrambled eggs today because nobody bothered.

I get that patents need to be as broad as possible to cover your ass. But that also hasn't stopped ridiculous things from being patented. For instance, Digital Domain right now is trying to patent stereo conversion... stuff that's bread and butter compositing. Every single composite usually involves a clever application of nodes and filters to achieve a desired effect. If the non-obvious standard sinks too low then it won't be an "invention" it'll just be who has the money to and clout to afford IP lawyers to help you file. RED is a "small dog" compared to Sony but you're all small dogs compared to RED. If RED decided to patent the histogram as applied to RAW footage they could afford to file the patent. Then you would be locked into RED footage when using something we've used all along because they had the resources to patent it while you as an artist don't. Hopefully this is an instance of real innovation. But the tech industry has been burned numerous times already by + "... on a computer" patents.

You do realise its the method of compressing the image that is the subject of the patent here, not the concept of compressing an image.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

"championed" past participle, past tense of cham·pi·on
Verb
Support the cause of; defend.

Websters

Championing is fine. However what Jim was saying sounded like.

"We recognize people compressed RAW before us. But we invented compressing 4k RAW. "

Which would be a terrifying precedent. What if I patent JPEG2000 compression of 30MP+ images? Sure people had compressed images before, but never ones so large! I'm trying to give RED the opportunity to calm our paranoia and then they start implying that doing something at higher resolution actually represents an invention. Which just makes me more paranoid that this isn't about some specific invention but doing a previous thing at a higher resolution.

You do realise its the method of compressing the image that is the subject of the patent here, not the concept of compressing an image.

As people are quick to point out... we don't know what the subject of the patent is here since the patent is incredibly broad and Jim sounds like he's defending the very idea of compressing a 4k bayer image.

 

[Evin Grant]

Remember that patents are issued not just to unique new inventions but to new applications of existing tech as well as novel uses of existing tech. The way I read the patent and the case as I see it is any manufacturer that creates a greater than 2K camera that records RAW at greater than 23fps to a modular and/or intergral recorder (not seperate outboard recorder like a codex, ninja etc.) with any type of compression scheme is in violation of the patent and needs to obtain a licence, or innovate around the patent. Seems pretty straight forward and fair to me.