If there’s one thing that the optics industry takes seriously, it is the patents attached to specific technologies.
After all, there’s a lot of money to be made in discovering new and novel technologies and that’s why titans like Apple won’t hesitate to go to court to protect their own IP – or what they perceive as their own.
Unfortunately for them, in this case the courts sided with RED in Apple’s challenge to their REDCODE RAW video codec patent.
As FStoppers reports, this failure on Apple’s part means that RED has some say over Cupertino’s own ProRes RAW codec for video.
In its simplest terms, a victory for Apple would mean that the company did not need to pay RED royalties for the ProRes RAW codec.
The whole basis for their argument to invalidate the patent was that it was not actually a new patent but rather a combination of two existing patents. In other words, it was not patentable in the first place thus the patent issued was de facto and de jure invalid.
This argument failed to convince the courts so now Apple is going to have to cut a check to RED for the codec.
Even so, relations between the two companies are still positive with RED’s president Jarred Land saying, “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.”
Still, cutting that check for the codec is probably going to annoy Apple just a little bit.
What do you think? Do you have any insight into this court case that you’d like to share? You can do that in the comments below.
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