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The patents in question are a new level of terribad. So bad that they can be trivially invalidated by prior art. Nikon's going to spend a lot of money on lawyer
by TD-Linux 4y ago
The patents in question are a new level of terribad. So bad that they can be trivially invalidated by prior art. Nikon's going to spend a lot of money on lawyers but is likely to win (if they don't settle out of court...)
(When reading patents, skip to the claims, they are the only part that actually matters).
7,830,967's independent claim is a 2k+ resolution video camera that records sRGB or rec709 gamma. That's it.
8,174,560 is even more ridiculous. It's a 2k+ resolution camera that records at a 6:1 or more compression ratio. No actual method or anything, just the concept of compressing at least 6:1 compression ratio. Check out indepedent claim #1.
Both of these are very likely to have very easy prior art available. Finding any camera that records high resolution video, made before the priority date would do it.
- dagmx 4y agoIf Apple and Sony couldn't fight RED on this, I doubt Nikon can either on the merits of these patents. Of course, Nikon likely has an arsenal of camera patents with which to negotiate with RED so that might be different.
- ryandamm 4y agoAgain, the patent to compress Bayer pattern data before de-Bayering is the pivotal one. There's a reason Apple is still paying royalties, and it ain't because they don't have good lawyers.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- izzydata 4y agoIt seems like there should be some kind of penalty for filing troll patents if they can be invalidated like that.
- AlbertCory 4y agoThere are legal remedies, like being forced to pay the other side's legal fees, and even worse consequences than that. Difficult to win, though.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago> if they don't settle out of court Nikon never settles out of court. They have excellent IP lawyers. That said, the video/imaging arena is a minefield of highly-enforceable patents. Very old ones. I don't miss writing that kind of software.
- booi 4y agoThey’re also known to quietly imply that you may also be infringing on some of THEIR patents for which they have an enormous pile of.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoYup. Like I said, I don’t miss that field too much. Like dancing in an iron maiden.
- bri3d 4y agoApple and Sony have both tried to invalidate this patent collection and failed.
- zamalek 4y ago> the concept of compressing at least 6:1 compression The level of bullshit that this industry gets away with is absolutely fascinating. I'm a gamer and I was part of the crowd who were galvanized by TotalBuiscuit, rest his soul. I am not alone, and part of an ever increasing amount of people, that seriously question the anti-consumerism (hence, anti-capitalist, if you're very patriotic) practices employed by the status quo. It's patently obvious to do so in hindsight, but I look at a lot more through that lens nowadays. Red is that 6-times distilled, 10-times cold filtered, 50 times purified, embodiment of anti-consumer practices and it's maddening.
- ryandamm 4y agoRed isn't a consumer company. How are they anti-consumer? I'm not defending their IP practices, but this is not as stupid as it seems. Nikon knew about the patents when they designed their cameras. The patents were not dumb in 2007-2008. Claims like the one excerpted are part of larger claim sets; if any claim gets invalidated, the rest that rely on it are useless. For the sake of being explicit, but also robust, lawyers will take a technical description and devolve it into a series of nested claims. Those individual claims, in isolation, sound dumb. But they're usually contingent on earlier claims that might reveal the novelty. (I have not read the patent.)
- wmf 4y agoThere's a conversation to be had about how much money Red is making from selling luxury goods to amateurs but this thread probably isn't the best place.
- Teever 4y ago> Red isn't a consumer company. How are they anti-consumer? Really? I think you know like everyone else here what consumer means in this context, it's not literally about consuming food, or the disease known as consumption, and that entities that aren't individual consumers in the nightly news sense of the word are called 'consumers' as well. In this instance semantics isn't insightful.
- zeusk 4y ago
- bdowling 4y agoI haven’t looked at the claims here, but the independent claims are the most broad claims of a patent. The dependent claims are always necessarily narrower. So, even if an independent claim is invalidated, it’s dependent claim may survive if it is novel and non-obvious over the prior art.
- AlbertCory 4y ago> even if an independent claim is invalidated, its dependent claim may survive if it is novel and non-obvious over the prior art. False. Let's say Claim 1 has elements A, B, and C. Claim 2 adds element D. Thus Claim 2 really has A, B, C, and D. If 'A' is invalidated, then any claim that includes it, i.e. that depends from Claim 2, is also invalidated.
- btrettel 4y agoThis is not true. Dependent claims are often viewed as "backup" claims in case the independent claims are rejected in prosecution by the patent examiner or found invalid by a court. It's not hard to find online sources to back this up, for example: https://patentlyo.com/patent/2008/05/theory-of-depen.html https://patentlyo.com/patent/2008/05/theory-of-depen.html https://www.natlawreview.com/article/patent-owner-tip-12-surviving-instituted-ipr-address-individual-claims-dependent https://www.natlawreview.com/article/patent-owner-tip-12-sur...
- bdowling 4y ago> False. You have it backwards. If a dependent claim is invalid, then the independent claim from which it depends is also invalid. It doesn't make sense the other way around.
- AlbertCory 4y agoI'm not sure who "you" refers to here. Your Patently Obvious article refers to patent prosecution, which is different from re-examination. Let's keep referring back to my original 1(A, B, C) and 2(D) example. A dependent claim is "backup" because the examiner may find that (A, B, C) is not patentable, but coupled with D, you get (A, B, C, D) which is. This happens all the time in prosecution. So let's say (A, B, C, D) is allowed and issued. Note that you did not win the right to sell a product with (A, B, C, D), because someone else (Call them CompanyX) has patented (A, B, C) and you are infringing it. All you've got is the right to exclude anyone, including CompanyX, from selling (A, B, C, D). If someone else infringes your patent and you sue them, and they're able to prove that 'A' was known in the art, then CompanyX's patent and yours are both invalidated.
- ryandamm 4y agoThe F900s that Lucas shot Episode 1 on recorded at sub-1080p resolution, _before_ being letterboxed. That was a long time ago.
- failTide 4y ago> 2k+ resolution camera that records at a 6:1 or more compression ratio. How does that even get granted? Does the patent office not have domain experts?
- jjoonathan 4y agoUSPTO is entirely funded through patent fees. They get more fees if they approve a patent. No, I am not joking: https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/performance-and-planning/budget-and-financial-information https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/performance-and-planning/budg... There's your problem.
- SeanLuke 4y agoThat is not the problem. Just because an agency is funded by fees does not mean that it has perverse incentives nor corruption (though it can be the case). After all, the FDA has to assess all of Pfizer's drug applications -- do you want to pay for all that out of your income tax, or should Pfizer be paying it? Furthermore, the USPTO has had the same issues described here long before they were self-funded by congress. The problem is that that the USPTO doesn't have enough money to hire inspectors and officials. They are woefully, desperately underfunded. The same problems that plague the USPTO also plague the IRS, and for the same reason. The USPTO would do much better if they were permitted to double the fees, or more, for patent application.
- toma_caliente 4y ago> That is not the problem. Just because an agency is funded by fees does not mean that it has perverse incentives nor corruption (though it can be the case). After all, the FDA has to assess all of Pfizer's drug applications -- do you want to pay for all that out of your income tax, or should Pfizer be paying it? The FDA gets billions in funding from the government and the USPTO does not. I'm not saying you are right or wrong about the problems regarding the USPTO but to compare its funding to the FDA is disingenious and wrong.
- btrettel 4y ago
- esquivalience 4y agoI checked what you said about the 967 patent. I'm afraid it's just wrong. You quoted some of the initial part and missed out the bit which actually describes what's happening: "an image processing system configured to perform a pre-emphasis function on the digital raw image data, to compress the digital raw image data after performing the pre-emphasis function such that the digital raw image data remains substantially visually lossless upon decompression, and to store the compressed digital raw image data in the memory device at a rate of at least about 23 frames per second, wherein the pre-emphasis function comprises a curve defined by the function y=(x+c)^g, where 0.01 <g<1 and c is an offset."
- nullc 4y agoThat "pre-empahsis" is a description of Rec 709 gamma. (the dependent claims go on to give the 709 constants for it).
- esquivalience 4y agoSure, I can't say - but when was that made part of Rec 709? I suppose that may well be what it invented... Edit - to clarify better that what I'm trying to convey is that the time and context matters too, and the claims have to be read in light of the description, so suggesting that claims are trivially invalid is something to be cautious about.
- nullc 4y agoRec 709 was published in _1990_ (and had that gamma structure then, of course!). All you can say red is doing is reciting the rather obvious combination of a 2k+ camera with rec 709, 23+ fps, etc. Maybe it's the case that someone can't find a 2k camera being offered to the public early enough to invalidate on a prior art basis-- but I can't see how anyone could conclude from this that a red success would be indicative of anything but a deeply flawed patent system in dire need of reform.
- dheera 4y agoHow do prior art pieces invalidate it if they weren't compressed with it?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TheRealPomax 4y agoIf you really believe they can be trivially invalidated, then it sounds like you should probably help out the patent office and initiate a patent challenge showing the prior art, so they can invalidate the RED patent? Hit up https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2206.html https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2206.html so that the USPTO can actually do the work necessary here because you prompted them to (they're not going to invalidate a patent until someone shows they should. They are backlogged for years on their regular queues already).