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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 :)

Sony's lawsuits against RED

Elsie N said:
(...) Thank goodness we haven't gone all Socialist in this country yet!
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LOL And only with this quote, you'd surely have already my vote (E :-)
 
Kemalettin Sert said:
actually RED should sue sony again because of this...REDMOTE is the worst product ever it never works
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KETCH ROSSi said:
Sorry that it hasn't for you, but in the in the 2 years I have been working with the various Redmotes, never had a single issue, and always worked flawlessly and saved that day in more then one way.
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Well, then you belong to a very exclusive club.
 
Normally I would expect everybody to just settle out of court and trade licenses for each other's various patents--essentially coming out as a wash. In this instance I imagine RED is more interested in the REDCODE patent getting legal confirmation than using it to leverage a cross licensing deal for REDMote tech and that means officially winning and getting a precedent that upholds the validity of their patent in court. I doubt there'll be a quick and quiet settlement.
 
Im sure some of you allready know that , there are several patent suits filed and in litigation at any given time .
In regard to the ( windows) os interface , people constantly file for patents for things allready invented ,as the patent office is irrevokably over loaded past capacity, so since one has a patent pending , they can and will sue . The companies being targeted usually just pay a petty amount and settle , so that leins and injunctions do not hold up production and sales .
Its terribly sad . It seems like thats alot of work , in order to get filthy money . But then again , some folks dont wanna sweat
 
Pablo Moreno said:
...
and donate those millions you are going to spend in lawsuits and lawyers, to the 900 million people in the planet that lack the access of clean water.. (dreamer!).
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That's a job for Bill Gates. Just buy Windows products and BOOM! you've helped make the world a better place.
 
Jannard said:
Bruce... you have little to no knowledge of the history of the invention apparently. And while you certainly have the right to your opinion, patent and trademark laws are to protect all sorts of rights. If you come up with a unique story and a large company reads it and takes it from you, you just might find that you would have a change of heart. No one wants to donate their work. And asking me to talk about the history behind the scenes on this forum is not going to happen.

I love your work and your ideas, I just don't agree that everything ever created should automatically become public domain. That would discourage all creative thought and taking risks to produce.

Additionally, RED pays many companies royalties to use patented technology.

Jim
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Thank you for responding so cordially, Jim! It is always classy and humbling to get a direct response. Especially when I'm complaining in your own "home". It means a lot.

In title design for movie trailers, we are constantly copied. Our own clients show our in-progress designs to our competitors - "can you copy what they did but cheaper?" - of course they can, because they didn't spend the hours coming up with the design!

Our competitors have won major awards with modified versions of our own 3D project files. There are tutorials to copy our designs on YouTube and a $199 plugin likely inspired by our Inception title... and trailers we worked on were even recreated in cardboard :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C__krVoDwU

Should we patent the idea of a maze forming a city forming a title (eg Inception)? No way. Next we'd have someone suing us for anamorphic lens flares or metal scratches.

We believe that the answer in the design industry is not to fight people copying us but to keep innovating and to respond to what our clients want next.

If our clients go to us, we try to give them the future they need. If they want some stale design that's a copy of something already done, go to the copycats. In turn, we are constantly humbled and inspired by all of the people who are out-innovating us. It's fun!

I believe that software patents harm way more than they help. And now with digital cameras... I believe we're in that world, sadly. I understand RED has their own perspective. Thanks for listening as always.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
I agree, Bruce. Keep innovating.

Jannard said:
I love your work and your ideas, I just don't agree that everything ever created should automatically become public domain. That would discourage all creative thought and taking risks to produce.
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I would have to disagree with that. There are plenty of ways to profit off of a technology or idea, including getting there first. Great artists always steal and sometimes the best solution is the one that someone else has already made. Trying to come up with a more efficient way to toast bread quickly and cost effectively certainly hasn't come along anytime in recent memory. That said, people should be able to patent things, but after some time the idea becomes ubiquitous enough (like using search terms and data input to derive advertising demographics in search engines, social networks, etc) that a patent becomes a hinderance.

So as someone who has IP to protect, I think there is a benefit in the short term, but that in the long term, with technology sometimes finding plateaus for periods of time, there are plenty of cases where "device that communicates with another via radio waves" is so generic given the technological climate that something has to be forfeited by the creator. Ideas can cannibalize themselves very quickly in today's world.

I don't pretend to know the details of the case, but there is an argument in past cases with other companies that things just wind up being hard to say one way or another. We'll see, I suppose.
 
Bruce Allen said:
Thank you for responding so cordially, Jim! It is always classy and humbling to get a direct response. Especially when I'm complaining in your own "home". It means a lot.

In title design for movie trailers, we are constantly copied. Our own clients show our in-progress designs to our competitors - "can you copy what they did but cheaper?" - of course they can, because they didn't spend the hours coming up with the design!

Our competitors have won major awards with modified versions of our own 3D project files. There are tutorials to copy our designs on YouTube and a $199 plugin likely inspired by our Inception title... and trailers we worked on were even recreated in cardboard :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C__krVoDwU

Should we patent the idea of a maze forming a city forming a title (eg Inception)? No way. Next we'd have someone suing us for anamorphic lens flares or metal scratches.

We believe that the answer in the design industry is not to fight people copying us but to keep innovating and to respond to what our clients want next.

If our clients go to us, we try to give them the future they need. If they want some stale design that's a copy of something already done, go to the copycats. In turn, we are constantly humbled and inspired by all of the people who are out-innovating us. It's fun!

I believe that software patents harm way more than they help. And now with digital cameras... I believe we're in that world, sadly. I understand RED has their own perspective. Thanks for listening as always.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
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Bruce, I love what you stand for, and respect your opinion.

I think the difference between you and Jim is...your investing time into your designs, while Jim is investing time...a vast amount of money & jobs. I have to imagine it feels different when you've spent hundreds of millions, and hired hundreds of workers, to make what you've created, only to see others steal it...for free.

You're both being stolen from, but your well-spring is your mind. No one can replace you, your talent.

But Jim and RED can be replaced. All you have todo is steal their code, make a similar camera, and sell it for less.

It will take RED a year or two to respond to Sony. Definitively.

You can respond to your challengers in a week, with a definitive, client winning design.

But RED doesn't have that luxury. They have hundred's of employees who's jobs hang in the balance if their camera/code gets copied, and stolen. If Jim doesn't stick up for them, and they are undercut and robbed, who will?

Design...and billion dollar tech...are not directly analogous. They both require ingenuity and genius. But one is harnessed around the individualized talents of a few, within short timeframes, while the other is harnessed around the work of thousands over many years. You can not compare the fate of the few, with the fate of the many. The stakes are not the same, even if your level of genius is.
 
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The question is "What is innovation?" Sony seems to be saying that a remote control like for your TV in the context of a camera is a breakthrough. RED seems to suggest that recording 4,000 horizontal pixels is a breakthrough from 2,000 pixels doing the exact same thing. Apple said they owned rounded rectangles. Digital domain claimed projecting a 2d image onto a 3d mesh for the purposes of stereo conversion was patentable. We'll see how these claims play out. It's important to protect hard fought R&D but if you lower the bar too low you spend more time and resources fending off frivolous lawsuits. It takes a lot of time and resources to file and protect a patent, that's why a lot of companies rely on trade secrets to protect their investment. It's costs nothing and they don't have to give their competitors the design on a silver platter. If compositors patented every trick they came up with to solve a myriad of production needs they would destroy the field in short order when a clever application of blur and premult cleans spill or my rgb to tritone conversion gizmo for instance blocked all future solutions. Even if people did want to patent some gizmo or macro, patents cost a lot of money to file and enforce--well outside the domain of the average person. And even if they were affordable and easy do you really want to be in the business of extracting rent from hundreds of customers? Patents are good, patents are essential--but not all patents and not all patent battles.
 
Yep.

ts the monopolistic part of patents that produce that blockage. My proposal has a reduced monopoly period to recover costs, and an open market model and now free patent registration. Plenty of details and mechanism to make it work cheaply and simply, but you can drop it all in and people just register their use (the payment control mech is where it gets complex). We are looking at a 10 times increase in the world economy and speed if development, and hopefully. a ten times decrease in uselessness.
 
Funny that Bkack Magic just released super 35mm 4K camera with compressed RAW, exactly the same thing as Red lawsuit against Sony! Just goes to show that granting patent on something as 4K with compressed RAW was outright idiotic. Red didn't invent compressed RAW, so why on earth they get to patent some random resolution of compressed RAW.
 
Are you sure the BlackMagic cam is actually compressed RAW? May wanna do your homework there....

If you dont think on the fly compressed RAW is an achievement, tell us how many minutes of BMC footage an average priced SSD holds.
 
Their website states it is "visually lossless" compressed CinemaDNG RAW. Sounds a lot like what RED touts as innovation...
 
Charles_Z said:
Their website states it is "visually lossless" compressed CinemaDNG RAW. Sounds a lot like what RED touts as innovation...
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Hmm, Maybe they licensed it from RED, or I think they will get a heavy law suit.

Or it might be that the DNG files are just packed not compressed, but then they would say lossless I guess not visually lossless.
 
Kemalettin Sert said:
yes it is 0 COMPRESSED RAW.
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I dont think Cinema DNG uses the same technique RED is defending. The BMC's raw sensor data is stored in a DNG container. Perhaps some data invisible to the human eye is discarded. Anyhow, I think RED's patent applies to 4k+ RAW compression.
 
Layi B said:
I dont think Cinema DNG uses the same technique RED is defending. The BMC's raw sensor data is stored in a DNG container. Perhaps some data invisible to the human eye is discarded. Anyhow, I think RED's patent applies to 4k+ RAW compression.
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even BMD states its COMPRESSED..what you trying to say here?
 
Before I proceed let me say, yes I generally hate litigation, but on a free market, it is a critical tool to protect those who invest the time and money to bring new technologies. I respectfully would tell you that to think some companies (i.e GOOGLE) are exempt or morally superior as to not use legal means to protect their IP is naive. ALL companies will protect their IP when needed, including the "heavenly" GOOGLE whom has been on a patent purchase spree. Which I suspect is not to just place in a lock box, but to go after anyone that crosses their path.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...23-patents-from-ibm-to-bolster-portfolio.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/15/google-motorola-mobility_n_927670.html

People like Lawyers like they like backup-plans. That is, everyone hates it, but wish they had one after their system crashes! :beer:


Bruce Allen said:
The camera industry is not just Sony and RED. And digital cameras are just getting started.

What is really sad is that this litigious environment RED has created through their actions discourages the NEXT innovative camera companies from getting started.

If the only people who can make cameras are those with deep enough pockets to handle RED suing them... that really sucks a lot for filmmakers who want to use innovative tools.

Think about the computer industry. Would it be awesome if it were just Apple and Microsoft fighting? No. It would suck. Having an industry controlled by litigious companies sucks. They need a Google to keep them honest. And let's face it - with all of this litigious nonsense, RED is looking to be more of a Microsoft than a Google.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
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Rehan K said:
Funny that Bkack Magic just released super 35mm 4K camera with compressed RAW, exactly the same thing as Red lawsuit against Sony! Just goes to show that granting patent on something as 4K with compressed RAW was outright idiotic. Red didn't invent compressed RAW, so why on earth they get to patent some random resolution of compressed RAW.
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Red didn't invent CinemaDNG RAW and Apple ProRes 422 for sure, but sometimes is confusing, what is exactly what Red patented?..
 
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