Sony's lawsuits against RED

[Paul Ellington]

Is this April fools? This is bat-you-know-what grasping at straws.

- E

 

[Tehben Dean]

Our patent system is so seriously messed up. At least these aren't patent trolls, even if they are trolling with their patents, because patent trolls make me ill.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

I dislike law suits, and never wish one even on to my worst enemies, which fortunately I don't have any... for now, but have only sued once in my life because I really had no choice, fortunately I won, yet the several months that tucked for that to be completed was nerve racking and a very stressful experience, and they settled out of court!


But I do absolutely understand and respect the need to protect once property, might that be physical or Intellectual property, so I am with RED for protecting their interest, and in this case since Sony is suing much later then when they were sued by RED is an obvious counter suit to pollute the waters, or they would have sued RED long before the Red Epic was ever released, never mind waiting two years.

 

[Rehan K]

But I do absolutely understand and respect the need to protect once property, might that be physical or Intellectual property, so I am with RED for protecting their interest, and in this case since Sony is suing much later then when they were sued by RED is an obvious counter suit to pollute the waters, or they would have sued RED long before the Red Epic was ever released, never mind waiting two years.

Just as Red waited a long time before suing F65? F65 was in the market for an year before the Red's lawsuit. Sony holds a lot of patents (close to 3000 in the US) . Just because they ignore the patent violations (not worth the lawsuit), doesn't mean they are going to ignore them when, in this case, Red is suing them directly.

Doesn't Sony even hold the patent on V-lock battery mount?

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

But I do absolutely understand and respect the need to protect once property, might that be physical or Intellectual property, so I am with RED for protecting their interest, and in this case since Sony is suing much later then when they were sued by RED is an obvious counter suit to pollute the waters, or they would have sued RED long before the Red Epic was ever released, never mind waiting two years.

Well obviously, but Sony are just doing the same thing you praise red for doing they're protecting their interests and their investments in the best way they can, imagine you came up with something fantastic only to have someone say "Hold on that violates my patent I want you to pay me x dollars and destroy all the hard work you've done" You'd defend yourself against it and that's what Sony is doing by saying "Hey we've got some patents too Red"

 

[Roger Valdes]

What goes around comes around... Red should have known better.

lol @ fanboys who raved at red suing sony.

 

[Brandon J.F.]

This is all pretty typical. Tech companies use patent infringement lawsuits as leverage to work out licensing agreements. The party that is first sued searches their patent portfolio for something they can counter sue for and then eventually both parties reach an out of court settlement. It will be interesting to see how strong Sony's patent claims are.

 

[Jay Birch]

And one can only chuckle at the timing..

Remind me again the timing of RED's initial lawsuit going public? 2 days before the release of the F55?

 

[Scott Brown]

The only people who do well in these situations is the lawyers....having said that, Jim, I support you 100% and you have to fight your corner!

The trouble with law suits is they take your eye off the ball, they are very time and money consuming and I hope RED stay focused on the end game and not a day of courtroom glory.

Good luck guys.

Scott

 

[Michel Rabe]

The party that is first sued searches their patent portfolio for something they can counter sue for and then eventually both parties reach an out of court settlement.

Yep. This certainly doesn't come as a surprise for Red.

 

[Peter Proniewicz-Brooks]

What goes around comes around... Red should have known better.

lol @ fanboys who raved at red suing sony.

I'd be amazed if RED hadn't taken this eventuality as pratically certain when they were looking at doing this.

Patent laws are vital for innovation, however there's almost certainly no way to create a set of laws that are in a usable that also aren't abusable. Abuse of the patent system is easily traceable back to Edison. The current system could stand to undergo improvement.

 

[Rick Darge]

FADE IN:

INT. SONY LABS - DAY

The brave bold title card, LAW WAR III : TICKLE MY PICKLE WITH A SUIT VERY FICKLE appears on screen for a brief ripple of a moment before it quickly speeds off to the right of frame. We follow it, blurring past rows and rows of computers and hardware until the speeding title card literally slices a random Sony engineer completely in half. The two pieces of the lonely engineer separate while he cries out to no one, "Just Like My Dreams Ma".

CUT TO:

Courtroom scene on a shrimping boat. 12 Jurors walk the plank while the pirate known simply by his self inflicted tattooed forehead that spells out his very name for all to see, R-E-D. This ageless mystic known as RED, bare knuckle boxes a couple of Sony lawyers at the bow of the ship. He throws them to the swimming Killer Whales in the dirty ocean below. One by one like rag dolls made out discarded AIBO parts. The Captain of the boat appears out of left field and comes diving down the side of the wind sail, cutting the fabric to slow his fall like Errol Flynn did in all those monochromatic movies he made. The Captain tosses the large rusted blade to the deck of the ship as if it were moldy bread. He wipes the sweat from his face and dramatically looks up at the lawyers while whispering in his calmest Japanese translation of 'Fuck You' LAW WAR III ensues for 2 hours and the ship eventually sinks and everyone floats away on a rainbow except for Jack Dawson. He gets hired by ARRI.

FIN

 

[David Kellermann]

Aaron Sorkin should write a script about this mess.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

I'd be amazed if RED hadn't taken this eventuality as pratically certain when they were looking at doing this.

Patent laws are vital for innovation, however there's almost certainly no way to create a set of laws that are in a usable that also aren't abusable. Abuse of the patent system is easily traceable back to Edison. The current system could stand to undergo improvement.

Patent laws are not vital for innovation, if anything they stall innovation.

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

I find it interesting that Sony cited the RED ONE. Really? Seems to me the tech RED was using back then was considered a SCAM by Sony, and a complete waste fo time. Back then how many 4k cameras were out? Please remind me.. This is a joke, and everyone will know it. But it will change no one's mind.

Jay

 

[Peter Proniewicz-Brooks]

Patent laws are not vital for innovation, if anything they stall innovation.

They can stall innovation when badly used, however if they weren't there to protect innovations then we would get far less revolutionary products, and far more slow evolution.

Simple economics means that a company making a device and paying off the costs of R&D has to sell at a higher price than a company just manufacturing. Manufacture under license is the way of dealing with this.

There are measures to prevent patents being abused, some more effective than others. For example certain technologies are deemed so vital that withholding licenses stifles competition and innovation that they are specially classified and the holder is required to licenses it out at reasonable rate. This perhaps needs to happen more often and have better mechanisms to ensure it does.

A minority of patent disputes make it to court, mostly if they are valid a settlement is reached often involving a license agreement or a settlement is reached as both sides decide a settlement may not be right but it makes more economic sense than testing it in court (often this is when neither side is sure it will win). The ones that become public are often abuses of the system in some way, this colours people's judgement of the patent system. A lot of news works this way, bad news is disproportionately reported as it sells newspapers and gets higher audiences online, on TV and radio.

 

[Timothy Eaton]

We dont know all the intricacies of these lawsuits, so I don't take the view that this is necessrily just a couple of type A personalities / corporations slugging it out. And while I'm no lover of litigation, I don't take the cynical view that only lawyers will win in this situation. Sure, either of those propositions could be true, but ...

What I do know is that Jim Jannard and his team have delivered extraordinary products at an unbelievable price, allowing me to work at a level of quality vs. investment that was inconceivable just a few years ago. Over these few years, I have witnessed Jim's deep dedication to producing tools for filmmakers that seems to arise as much out of his love for imagery and the filmmaking craft as it does out of a desire to make a buck. He seems to have almost felt a calling and thrown himself and his energies at making these remarkable cameras with wild abandon.

This is rare, and while I have no axe to grind for Sony, I've never seen anything like it from them. For these reasons, I'm willing to give Jim the benefit of the doubt here. He's earned a high degree of trust from me. I wish him and Red all the best.

 

[Elsie N]

There was a Time when You could Patent a Product, but only For a Limited time. Then it became Public domain so that the Public could improve and Evolve the product...

I've advocated for a long time that this is the way forward. And it should apply to Copyright as well, IMO. Current Patent and Copyright laws stifle creativity because they preclude taking an idea and improving on it without tip toeing around the edges. But these are the laws we've got and I expect a company that has an idea under patent that gives them a market advantage to defend that right. And in this case, even under the one-patent time frame RED would still be in its protected phase.

I'm suspicious that SONY has anything substantial to use for a counter-suit because I think RED (Jim) has been involved in enough patent protection suits in the past to know that you have to respect other companies patents. RED isn't lazy and any company that takes shortcuts by improperly utilizing another company's Intellectual Property should be challenged for being lazy. It appears to me that SONY took so long to respond because they just couldn't find anything that remotely could be construed as patent infringement by RED. '-)

SONY is a Godzilla of a corporation and I'm sure outside of the camera division no one knew of the infringement by them. I think this is like Nixon and Watergate. He knew nothing of the break-in but he was heavily involved in the cover-up. Corporate SONY seems to be the Nixon here by trying to counter with an (probably) untenable lawsuit.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Some posters here are taking this in a very casual fashion. I think that's wrong; this is not good, or humorous, or a spectator sport. Just watch out... as I posted in the 'RED sues Sony' thread, these patent fights are getting *nasty*

So far it's often been confined to manufacturers. But NPEs (patent trolls) especially have been increasingly going after *end users* - suing your local coffee shop for infringing some dubious patent related to WiFi because they use a Netgear access point, instead of suing Netgear directly.

Indeed. And that hit's close to home. Two of my clients are currently facing litigation from in-app purchase patent troll LodSys. All I can say is the system is broken, yet no one seems interested in fixing it other than us bystanders. Anyway, I'm watching intently, taking notes, getting ready for a fight on this front. One of the suits involves an app I helped develop. Although I had nothing to do with the in-app purchase parts of it. I do have other apps out there that could be targeted. At this moment, I think I'm safe and with the number of apps vs. number of such suits filed, I have about equal chance of winning the lottery. I'm actually thankful they just targeted Disney on this front, they may have bit off more than they can chew with that one, hopefully. I see they're not brave enough to directly face Apple or Google with such law suits.

There's no reason this couldn't affect our business too. Users of RED cameras could get letters from Sony lawyers saying 'pay us off or we'll shut down your business'; users of Sony cameras could get the same letter from RED lawyers.

We're not just spectators, or collateral damage here; we could each end up right in the firing line.

Sony has a reputation to protect and I doubt they would be crass enough to start targeting third party production companies or end users in this industry. That could be a kamikaze move for them. Sony is not a patent troll, they still need to save face in the eyes of their customers, real and potential, and also for the industry as a whole.

 

[Elsie N]

What goes around comes around... Red should have known better.

lol @ fanboys who raved at red suing sony.

i think you may be premature in your glee at the prospect of RED's impending destruction. SONY's response appears pretty meek, even to an observer like me. And by the way, RED is my ally and any opponent of my ally is my opponent. Prepare for battle! (As time permits.) '-)