F55: Sony's Response to Red

The text of Sony's response:
Sony Comments re Patent Suit
Filed By
Red Digital Cinema

On February 12, 2013, Red Digital Cinema ("Red") sued Sony Corporation of America and Sony Electronics Inc. and alleged that the Sony PMW-F5, PMW-F55, and F65 digital cinema cameras infringe two Red patents. The F65 has been commercially available for over a year and the F5 and F55 were announced in October, 2012.

Sony has now had an opportunity to study Red's complaint and the asserted patents, and categorically denies Red's allegations. Sony intends to defend itself vigorously in the Red lawsuit. Sony looks forward to prevailing in court, thus vindicating the Sony
engineers who developed Sony's quality digital cinema cameras.
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brad smith said:
Good to hear!
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What's "good" about it? It's the same type of stock denial issued by every company that gets sued -- "the claims are baseless, and we will vigorously defend ourselves." Pretty much a non-event, and it just means that Sony isn't acknowledging guilt, they're intending to have the lawyers battle it out -- whether that's in court, or in a settlement, that all remains to be played out. I mean, in short, it all amounts to:

Red: You infringed our patents.
Sony: No we didn't.

Certainly nothing here implies that the situation will be resolved soon, or that either party has acknowledged guilt or is intending to settle; it just says that both are armed to the teeth and intend to fight.
 
Although, when I went back to copy the text of the "breaking news" segment, the background picture had scrolled to this one, and it did seem a little funny in context of the F65 having just been sued...
f65.jpg
 
Whether Red's claims have any merit, or not, I'd not want to take Sony head-on. (unless it's their customer service, at which I'd like to get out my Festivus pole and air my grievances and show incredible feats of strength!)

Lawsuits generally come down to whom can out-spend. Jannard may have to sell-off a couple of his islands to fund this one: His measly $2.8 Billion doesn't stack-up very well to Sony's estimated cash reserves of $142B. :embarasse

I wish I was council on this one...maybe I'd buy an island.
 
The F65 has been commercially available for over a year
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Anyone else see a deeper meaing in this.... Sony basically saying that the F65 has been out for a year now, yet this lawsuit is filled just as the big threats to RED arrive on the scene (literally the same week)
 
Because the release of the F65 and the design of the F5/F55 predate Red's patents. Remember the requirement that a patent be new technology? Sony has several patents related to RAW going back several years.

Remember, Jim J didn't invent RAW or digital images or digital video. Basically he took DSLR technology (or which he's the first to admit he's a big fan) and record it fast enough for video. i-frame didn't work (each video image a full picture) it was too much data with raw. The question is, which of the many schemes to reduce the data rate while keeping image quality was used and who patent it first.
 
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In the USA it is the date of the invention that counts, not the date a patent issues which counts, in other countries it is the filing date. It can take years for a patent to issue from the time of "invention".
 
What about compression applied by the SSD Cards themselves? I read some harddisks use this to speed up write speed on compressable files.

Patenting, brb.
 
Duke M. said:
... The question is, which of the many schemes to reduce the data rate while keeping image quality was used and who patent it first.
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I think the answer is Cineform. I'd love to hear the Davids comment on this, but they seem to keep a very low profile nowadays.
 
LeavingTheCandy said:
Lawsuits generally come down to whom can out-spend. Jannard may have to sell-off a couple of his islands to fund this one: His measly $2.8 Billion doesn't stack-up very well to Sony's estimated cash reserves of $142B. :embarasse
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I think your numbers are a tad out of date... Sony's been hemorrhaging money the last decade. Their cash reserves are more like $8 billion, not $142 billion! And even that isn't actually available, because, as said, Sony is losing money rapidly so they can't commit their cash on hand.

JJ, on the other hand, is growing rapidly. When he first started Red he was barely over a billion. Now he is up to almost three. This fight may not be nearly as one-sided as some may think...
 
Duke M. said:
Because the release of the F65 and the design of the F5/F55 predate Red's patents. Remember the requirement that a patent be new technology? Sony has several patents related to RAW going back several years.

Remember, Jim J didn't invent RAW or digital images or digital video. Basically he took DSLR technology (or which he's the first to admit he's a big fan) and record it fast enough for video. .
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Big fan? I have never seen more hostility towards DSLR's than over at REDuser and most certainly a lot of that has come from the big man himself.
Further, wasn't JJ a supposed fan of the new Sony camera's, even asking where he could buy one upon it's release? All of this PR stuff whether for or against the competition is a pile of malarky. As far as I am concerned even the lawsuit is just another form of PR. We will see how this get's settled, but frankly why should anyone here care?
 
Green,
While Son'y net income is negative in 2012 (who's isn't, except Apple), Sony has a Balance Sheet (total assets) that would make Jannard's head spin. Not even close to being in the same galaxy.
 
yoclay said:
Big fan? I have never seen more hostility towards DSLR's than over at REDuser and most certainly a lot of that has come from the big man himself.
Further, wasn't JJ a supposed fan of the new Sony camera's, even asking where he could buy one upon it's release? All of this PR stuff whether for or against the competition is a pile of malarky. As far as I am concerned even the lawsuit is just another form of PR. We will see how this get's settled, but frankly why should anyone here care?
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I meant he's a big fan of DSLR's for taking pictures. He was a hobbiest photographer long before Red was formed (he has photography web sites), which is probably why he went with raw in the Red cameras. He was already working with it in DSLRs. A DSLR has the basic structure of a video camera, you just need a way to record at a higher frame rate.
 
Funny how the pendulum swings. Remember when Sony sold $250,000 1080p cinema cameras and people slammed them for holding back tech in order to nickel and dime their customers?

Since no one here has started or runs two of the biggest names in cinema right now (Sony/RED) there sure is a lot of posturing going on. I'd say more so then the "pr'' stunts supposedly being played out on the internet.
 
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