RED Taking Sony To Court Over Patent Infringement, Wants Cameras Destroyed

Love or hate them, there’s no denying the impact of RED digital cinema cameras and technology, and how they have changed the world of image acquisition. Recently though, RED have filed a suit against Sony and have made claims that specifically call out the Sony F65, F55, and F5 cameras for patent infringement, which indicates that all “infringing cameras” should be destroyed.

You can read the patent suit file here, but I’ll give you the break down like this– RED wants Sony to stop making and selling these cameras, AND they want the cameras to be destroyed. Language in the actual document states:
“For an order requiring Defendant (Sony) to deliver up and destroy all infringing cameras.”
Does this seriously mean that all F65, F55, and F5 cameras would need to be re-acquired by Sony and then trashed? Does this have international implications?

Looking at RED, they are a relatively young company that started around 1999-2000, and while not all verified, some resources indicated they have sued other businesses and even a blogger in one instance (*gulp*). No doubt that with having an industry changing technology, there are bound to be some copycats, and even theft going on. Enter Sony, a company that has a vast enterprise of products, not just video cameras. Around 2000 Sony began to introduce it’s CineAlta line of digital cinema cameras, but only in the last 2 years have they begun to enter the 4K world.

If you’d like to look at the tech-heavy patents, here they are below:

Patent 1
Patent 2

Discussions are heating up in comments section of the original article on Deadline, over what RED’s plans are. So what do you think? Is RED making false accusations to justify lost sales? Perhaps you despise Sony and are happy to see them brought to justice with suit, if only a small prick in the armor that is their large corporation? We would love to hear from any RED or Sony users out there.

[via dslrnewsshooter.com via deadline.com]