Interesting move by Nikon, thoughts?
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Let’s hope that this means that other companies that try to implement some form of lossy-raw codec for motion pictures now can actually innovate in this field.
RED held a patent on this (crazy that they got through with such a broad strokes patent application in the first place!) and sued basically everyone, including nikon, against any kind of implementation. That’s the reason why so many video cameras to this day shoot demosaiced color-subsampled stuff. Compressed raw was only possible through external recorders because of this patent.
Canon settled with RED over their RAWlite implementation and for exchange RED could use the RF mount for one of their newer cams if I recall correctly. Not sure how it went with Sonys raw format and if they settled behind doors or not. Arri could only ever record raw on external devices with lossless raw compression. Blackmagic had lossy DNG compression but was sued by RED, removed that type of lossy-dng and implemented their BRAW which was partially demosaiced to cirmumvent the RED patent.
Nikon challenged RED over the compressed raw-patent again, RED sued and now this.
Very interested in how Nikon might change this stupid stance on a stupid patent.
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Here’s the patent, if anyone’s interested in reading it:
It’s currently set to expire in 2030, so they still have a few years to squeeze out some licensing profits.
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I can only imagine where the industry could have been if patenting something like this was not possible at all.
Maybe the intention was noble at some point in time. At the end I can see more harm done than good.
Yeah although they may have a different attitude towards patents. Some companies want to keep their competitors locked out of the market unless they can offer something REALLY juicy in return, other companies stick with reasonable royalties and/or more comprehensive cross-licensing agreements. Honestly a sane company can often make more money from reasonable royalties than from keeping the competition from the market - especially since karma can be a real bitch here.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Nikon, Sony, Canon, and the like are already heavily cross-licensed.
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