Apple vs Red - Apple loses 1st round... interesting?

Patent trolls don’t make anything. They just buy up patents and sit on them hoping for a payday.

Red’s patents go the heart of their redcode raw codec and compression processes used in every camera they make and in the post processing software supporting them. Their engineers developed and perfected the sensors, custom circuitry, firmware and software in house for this. They rightfully own it.

The process was unique and detailed enough to be awarded multiple patents and those patents have withstood every challenge so far. The process covers compressing and recovering raw Bayer sensor data in a visually lossless file format for moving images. Something no video camera had done before Red.
The only other raw process even remotely similar is compressed CDNG, an open standard Huffman DCT TIFF compression. Red uses wavelet compression.
It doesn’t affect compression of debayered video files in common use. Canon Rawlite and Black Magic’s Braw claim a “partial” debayer before compression, so their codecs are not true Bayer raw compression.
 
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Which indicates what about Apple's objectives. Their staff lives with the patent office having filed over 2200 in about a year. So they know exactly what will or will not work at the patent office and in court.
Samsung filed 10,000 patents in 18 months. You've got to wonder what kind of mess there is at the patent office with big technology companies filing thousands of patents each year.
 
I think REDCODE may be a unique way of recording, but to hold back all other forms of internal raw recording is, in my opinion, over reaching. DNG and its offshoot of CDNG might have predated RED, and certainly Canon RAW from stills cameras lead the way a long time ago and it is a logical progression to move something similar forward to motion images. Apparently that logic doesn't stand up in court though, or this would have been over many years ago. I still believe that motion raw is an obvious continuance of still based raw.
 
I note on REDUSER Jarred Land posted: “We are pleased to see our REDCODE patents withstand another challenge.To be clear, as I mentioned before, this never really was Apple vs. RED.
It has always been APPLE + RED, and this was all part of the process defining how we work together in the future. RED integration with Apple’s METAL framework for realtime R3D playback is coming along well and the work that the two teams are doing together is exceeding expectations. We are very excited for the new Mac Pro and the new XDR pro display and the power they bring to the entire RED workflow.”

Is this just RED+ Apple woking together to "prove" that REDCODE is unassailable and frighten off any other challenges?
IE if Apple can't crack it no one else will?
As noted above Apple spend a lot of time at the Patent office so they are unlikely to go in with insufficient evidence or the wrong approach.

Though with corporate games at this level who knows? ( for an insight this is a good guide https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1590597214/ )
 
I'm pretty sure they want to find a way of recording raw on iphones, going to court over a partnership is pointless. I think the above is just more spin.

And certainly Apple has plenty of experience litigating patent and copyright issues, so it's odd that they got stopped for not following process correctly or thoroughly. I still think we will see round 2 on this.

And there were certainly forms of Cineform way before RED, I was familiar with Cineform back in about 1999 or 2000 but they did not have a Cineform RAW back then. And wavelet compression has been around for decades as applied to still images, applied to motion there were a few including Cineform. Wavelet applied to RAW video data could be seen to be an obvious progression but might be unique enough to make it through our somewhat flawed patent system. I'm surprised it holds up in every other part of the world though.
 
As Jarred said, they license their IP to other companies, Apple included, often. So this round was more likely a form of negotiating tactic over potential license fees.
 
Greg_E said:
I'm pretty sure they want to find a way of recording raw on iphones,..
Click to expand...
Low-to-medium gear is probably going to feature H265 (or its replacement) + some form of a Log. Presuming 6K/8K is just around the corner, file sizes on smartphone internal SSD's can't be too large.

PS. If Apple wanted to kill Red, it could just have FoxConn make a Helium/Monstro clone and sell it for $5,000. Samsung would be more than happy to serve as a subcontractor on the design.
 
It feels more like preliminary sparring to me....

I don't think this is a negotiating tactic or Apple wouldn't have started off by launching ProRes RAW with exactly zero products that meaningfully use it and THEN go about challenging RED...that's the timeline right ?

So far there's been no uptake in by anyone. No Cameras. Only Atomos desperately announcing how many cameras might one day have it. Not a single camera outputs it yet right ? Even with them agreeing to pay RED ? I presume that's what actually started this off....

Which seems to me that it more likely that Apple didn't think it was a problem and then it was...

Only question is, do Apple just cough up and pay RED and get on with ProRes RAW or do they escalate and keep trying to invalidate the patent....

JB
 
John Brawley said:
Only question is, do Apple just cough up and pay RED and get on with ProRes RAW or do they escalate and keep trying to invalidate the patent....JB
Click to expand...

I think they will come back better prepared "...escalate and keep trying to invalidate the patent...." as you said.

Apple's track record of now not supporting a number of legacy codecs with FCPX and with their introduction of PR RAW that as you point out isn't exactly killing the world in either acquisition or post puts Apple in an interesting position. If no camera manufacturer pics up PR RAW, most have their own RAW formats, where is PR RAW going? I guess into their own future products if they can win their case against RED. PR RAW was hailed as a great step forward and quite a few pundits forecast that it would become a "de-facto" post production workflow within 18-24 months. I suggested at the the time this wasn't likely to happen. Well so far time shows that this far seeing prophecy of a big uptake of PR RAW has fallen a bit flat. That I guess leaves Apple with a couple of choices. Push legally to break Red's monopoly of internal "true" RAW recording or drop the idea all together. The first option has drawbacks in as much that if Apple break Red's hold over internal RAW recording it opens the flood gates potentially. That means most other camera manufacturers could now possibly implement full RAW recording in their cameras. This then makes it all the more lightly that camera manufacturers would have even less incentive to take up PR RAW as the path would now be open for them to implement their own internal RAW workflows.

I think Apple going by the funds they have spent in fights with the likes of Samsung will not lie down and take this quietly. It will be interesting to see where this dispute goes.

Chris Young
 
In case anyone from the APPLE legal team is reading, I'd suggest looking at the DNG file format and how it logically went to CDNG and how far it predates RED with the DNG. The obviousness test might win on this one. It is also obvious that internal recording of RAW has been in cameras for a good long time, frame rates were only limited by the physical shutter to block out the sensor during the read timing.

It could also (maybe) be said that 3 chip cameras have handled RAW for a very long time, they just had 3 streams of data that had to be combined into a "compressed" single stream of video (3:1). This last one might be a bit of a stretch, but cameras have been dealing with the raw image and recording it in RGB 444 for some time.
 
John Brawley said:
Only question is, do Apple just cough up and pay RED and get on with ProRes RAW or do they escalate and keep trying to invalidate the patent....

JB
Click to expand...

Considering that Red is strong arming any company using ProRes Raw into paying them an additional licensing fee, it might not be so simple for Apple.
 
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