Japan's IP High Court upheld the invalidation of RED's compressed RAW video patent JP 5231529 on 30 June 2026, ending a challenge Panasonic filed in 2022. Sony, Apple and Nikon all attacked the same patent family and failed. Nikon, which bought RED in 2024, lost this one defending it.
Read the full story: Japan Court Kills RED's Compressed RAW Patent →
Transcript
For nearly two decades, if you wanted to record compressed RAW inside a camera, you dealt with RED's patent. Sony fought it in 2013 and the patent survived. Apple went at it in 2019 and got its petition denied. Nikon countersued in 2022 and the case was dismissed. Then Panasonic won. Japan's Intellectual Property High Court upheld the invalidation on June thirtieth. And the thing that killed it was a prior art filing that had been public the entire time. RED argued its method was special because it compressed before demosaicing. The court read the reference and found it already covered that. RED said its preprocessing differed from gamma correction. The court found the claim was written too broadly to exclude gamma correction. Write a claim wide enough to catch competitors and it is wide enough to catch the prior art. Best part: Nikon bought RED in 2024, and then lost this appeal defending the patent it used to attack.