Nikon bought RED Camera

[Black Phoenix]

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/07/nikon-buys-film-camera-maker-red/

Ever heard of Oakley Sunglasses? The guy who founded that — Jim Jannard — became a billionaire after selling a lot of sunnies, then went on to found RED digital cinema, one of the first major digital cinema camera brands. Today, Nikon Corporation has announced its agreement to acquire the camera manufacturer, turning into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nikon Corporation.

The RED company set out to develop a sensor that could match the high quality of DSLR cameras (especially in low light) without compromising frame rate. This sensor’s physical size was comparable to analog film, bridging the gap between digital and traditional film production. The first results were showcased at the 2006 NAB Show, where Jannard announced the RED One camera, immediately capturing the industry’s attention and opening for preorders. The camera’s potential was further demonstrated in 2007 by director Peter Jackson’s short film “Crossing the Line,” shot with prototype RED One cameras. This short film convinced director Steven Soderbergh to shoot his film “Che” with RED technology, marking a significant milestone in digital cinema.

First was Altrium being acquired by Renesas. Now Nikon jumps to the forefront of cinema after years of trying to beat Canon and Sony in video.

Japanese companies are really swimming in money from the looks of it...

[Jackster]

Bet they will move manufacturing out of the US.
That compressed "RAW" patent (which is just JPEG) is worth it for Nikon. Now they can roll their own cinema camera and try to compete with Canon and Sony.
Even though Sony makes Nikon's CCDs.

Going to be an interesting few years.

[thm_w]

RED are patent trolls, they don't have special tech, just happened to get a patent for it.

[chriswebb]

Patent trolling usually implies they don’t make products and simply rely on their patents. Are you saying they should leave money on the table since they were granted an enforceable patent? Do you need another youtube video to help you decide?

[Someone]

The patent is plainly obvious as it required claims of larger resolution and higher frame rate, which were natural extensions of the known (and already demonstrated) methods. They added zero technical or inventive steps.

[tom66]

Patent trolling usually implies they don’t make products and simply rely on their patents. Are you saying they should leave money on the table since they were granted an enforceable patent? Do you need another youtube video to help you decide?

A company can be a patent troll when they abuse the patent system to stifle competition and maintain their monopoly position despite the technology that is patented not being specifically innovative.

Patent examiners aren't always engineers and can't always appreciate why a patent is not novel.  I say this having had a US patent issued in my name (for a technique I do believe was novel!)   The documents that the patent examiner cited were clearly found on just a textual search and the one document they brought up referencing prior art was completely unrelated to the technology in question.

As is my understanding, RED took the JPEG2000 codec, which has a lossless mode, made a few adjustments, and then patented the application of that type of codec to higher resolution images (above 2K in each dimension).  Since there are really only a few ways to do lossless efficient image compression, this effectively gave them a market monopoly, but didn't return the benefit of the patent to society (that is, an explanation of how the novel technology works, because, we already knew how JPEG2000 works!)

There was no novel step or technique in RED's patent, but if you put enough jibberish in front of a patent examiner, they may well bite and issue you the patent.  Patent offices are often under a lot of pressure too, as there can be a several year-long backlog to get patents issued.

[switchabl]

That compressed "RAW" patent (which is just JPEG) is worth it for Nikon. Now they can roll their own cinema camera and try to compete with Canon and Sony.

https://petapixel.com/2023/04/27/reds-lawsuit-against-nikon-dismissed-z9-gets-to-keep-compressed-raw/

The article speculates that RED may have caved altogether but I think the most likely scenario is that they came to a licensing agreement that was reasonable for Nikon.

So I don't think this is about the patent. Nikon has been getting more serious about video but they aren't exactly a known brand in that space and didn't even have a dedicated cine product line. AFAIK the other main contenders are Sony and ARRI, Canon is a bit of a different niche.