If its all about raw wavelet compression then why doesn't cineform aka gopro, sue Red? I believe they were the first to come out with a visually lossless wavelet video compression format years before Red was even thought of.

When it comes to litigations like this, it's all about losses vs gains.

RED has nothing to lose anymore because they will be just that small funky camera company ( with a bad attitude ) in a few weeks. As soon as all those 4K cameras start to roll off the assembly lines RED will get steamrolled in volume production race. RED have offered all they could to the market in the near future and from this point on they have to thrive on gimmicks and fanfare from fanboys and perhaps a few units sold here and there to some faithful producers. Being " FIRST " will wear off soon and then the consumer start considering the usual factors in a smart purchase and that's when the RED's demise begin. Scarlet just turned to be an overpriced pinkish toy ( no- not Vitaliy's favourite shade ), Epic never came out of Beta stage and the consumer has to rent TWO to cover the down time and the stupid cropping on over crank is just stupid. Accessorizing RED cameras truly is a pain and it is downright rip-off .

What is RED's gain in this litigation !? Well Vitaliy already has brought up a couple of brilliant points. Let's add to that. Is it possible that RED is forcing SONY to buy RED and dissolve it within ? That way JJ is going to make gold from coal.

Some Jannard responses:

We have taken a bit of flak for filing a lawsuit against Sony Electronics.

1. Sony stepped up and finally supported 4K from cameras to displays. That is helping to cement 4K as the real cinema standard. Good. We actually have a Sony 4K 84″ display and Sony 4K projector at RSH for reference.

2. We are heavily invested in concepts, inventions, designs, development and manufacturing of RED cameras, REDRAY and the RED Projector. Each is unique and has motivated the industry to get better, for the benefit of all. We don’t mind others joining the 4K revolution… quite the contrary, we embrace it. What we don’t accept is others just borrowing our technology, intentionally or unintentionally. We admire invention and happily pay for and license great technology from other companies when it is useful to our program.

3. We have created many jobs in the US leveraging our vision and technology and we will aggressively protect our employees. Every single job matters. It is a magic trick to build a camera in the US, especially at the highest level. This cannot be done if others are allowed to just take what we have done and use our work as their own.

4. Our customers have invested in our technology. They need to be protected and their investment needs to be protected. We have an obligation to our customers so they will not have their investment diluted by a proliferation of the proprietary technology they invested in.

We don’t mean to be heavy handed. We saw 4K as the future standard in 2005. We have endured comments that “RED was a scam”. “1080P was good enough.” “What does a sunglass guy know about cameras?”… as well as others I would never publish.

Patents are here for a reason. They protect IP. Receiving a patent now means that you have an obligation to protect it… or they have absolutely no value whatsoever.

We are anxious to resolve this and have everyone move along. But in the end… our ideas, employees and customers matter. We will tenaciously protect all of them.

He added more later (I’ve combined the later responses into one, separated by line breaks):

This is a REDCODE RAW issue… one that many have acknowledged for years as a core invention of RED and >incredibly important to what we all are doing.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev, amen, wasn't taking the position, just reporting to the thread as I hadn't seen it yet. Thanks for stripping the relevant information from the link I will remember to do that in the future.

I think you are all a bit hard on Red. I can't comment much on this lawsuit, it looks out of place but I don't have enough knowledge in this subject of patent to be sure. But we can't say Red didnt bring anything good to the game. Yeah I was awfuly disapointed by the 3k for 3k scam and how they ended up staying a brand for the "elite" (with buggy cameras, go figure). Still, the cameras have potential and maybe had the influence on other manufacturers to bring it up. I am also annoyed by the arogance of JJ but I give him some respect for what he did. Let's not just throw to many stones at him...

If American lawyers would have the saying, they would patent breathing or drinking water. They already patented life (DNA). How sick is that?

@tenjin I'm with you on that. You may not like the personalities inhabiting the place, but small innovative companies like Red and Blackmagic push the big corporate Japanese companies in directions they wouldn't go without that push. I never considered owning a Red, they were just too cost prohibitive, and to be honest I hated the club-like attitude like everybody else. The only way to afford one was to go out and get pro. gigs to pay off the rig, and that's not a direction some filmmakers want to go. But to the displeasure of some of their clients, they gave indies an in to Red imaging with the R1BT at a price that was just too good. So now, I split my time between PV and reduser. Both have diehard loyalists, with good reason. Each can have disdain for the other, but in the end everyone benefits from their existence.

You can hit the Scarlet angle again and again, but if you step over to a little place called "Blackmagic Hell", you'll see that there is a price to be paid for going with new innovative and cheaper options, there's growing pains. I think Red is responsible for a lot of retooling of technology and changing price points from the bigs, and I would not want to see a world without Red or Blackmagic. And at least Jannard is there and you can get a conversation going, unlike at Blackmagic where all you get are a few vague comments dressed as updates for over six months. Speak up about it and you get shouted down by the BM fanboys over there...seems to be a pattern here.

Just my two cents.

@Lincoln11

"You can hit the Scarlet angle again and again, but if you step over to a little place called "Blackmagic Hell", you'll see that there is a price to be paid for going with new innovative and cheaper options, there's growing pains."

Yes...but the big difference is that Blackmagic quietly (and actually) released a democratizing camera without years of marketing Balderdash...that never eventuated anyway.

How exactly did the Scarlet fiasco (or even RED One) help "change price points". A fundamental principle of philosophy is that correlation does NOT prove causation. Just because RED was making flatulent marketing promises for years doesn't prove that the "Bigs" got cold feet and started the DSLR revolution. The way technology advances this was going to happen anyway. Ironically, it's now RED that's re-adjusting its prices because of the DSLRs and the "Smalls"...and lashing out at the "Bigs" who want to give customers (even Soccer mums) value-for-money cameras.

The other difference is that BM is quietly fixing the issues...I would rather have a "few vague (relevant) comments" from the CEO than an avalanche of arrogant bullshit...often aimed at specific individuals (a rather pleasant Englishman comes to mind)...and blaming everyone else.

...and then there is the Cult of REDLoser...

How much was a Sony F35 before RED came along? Quarter million bucks or so? Now there are F3, F5 and F55.

RED has kicked some as…s and now they get theirs kicked from below. But wait: There is moiré, rolling shutter and the limitation to 30 fps. Colors are very nice though. And then the price!

@GH2UW - This I agree with!!

<Now RED is trying to deny us that very affordability with flatulent lawsuits. If they take this approach I'm sure the Big players will find some patent infringements of their own.>

look at all the RED haters :)

@re9d

LOL. Quite strong and flawed opinion.

Just for your reference, Red patent is about raw data compression for video. Similar compression is used for photo raw, but they patented using it for anything 24fps or higher. Usage patent, that make it very questionable :-)