RED’s Compressed RAW Patent Invalidated in Japan – Nikon Loses Defending the Patent It Once Fought

by Nino Leitner2 days ago

One of the most consequential patents in cinema camera history has fallen in Japan: the Intellectual Property High Court in Tokyo has upheld the invalidation of the Japanese counterpart of RED’s famous compressed RAW video patent, ending a challenge brought by Panasonic against a patent now owned by Nikon. The court found the contested claims lacked an inventive step, handing Nikon a defeat over the very patent it attacked in court before buying RED, and denting an intellectual property fortress that had repelled challengers for nearly two decades.

Few pieces of intellectual property have shaped our industry like this one. For almost two decades, RED’s “Video camera” patent family, covering visually lossless compressed RAW recording inside a camera, determined which manufacturers could offer internal RAW and at what cost. It forced Kinefinity to remove CinemaDNG from its cameras, saw Blackmagic Design quietly strip CinemaDNG from the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and URSA Mini Pro via firmware once BRAW arrived, kept ProRes RAW off the DJI Ronin 4D for years, and ultimately played a central role in Nikon’s acquisition of RED in 2024. Now, at least in Japan, that patent is treated as if it had never existed.

What the Japanese courts decided

The patent at the center of the dispute is Japanese patent number 5231529, titled simply “Video camera” and registered from application 2010-503253, the Japanese member of the patent family RED filed internationally in April 2008, claiming priority back to April 2007. It names RED founder James Jannard and color scientist Thomas Graeme Nattress as inventors and describes the core of REDCODE: transforming red and blue image data based on green pixel values before compression, so that Bayer sensor data can be compressed heavily yet remain visually lossless when demosaiced in post.

A drawing from RED’s ‘Video camera’ patent filing. Image credit: J-PlatPat / Japan Patent Office.

Panasonic filed an invalidation trial against this patent with the Japan Patent Office. The JPO sided with Panasonic, ruling that the contested claims combined existing technologies and lacked an inventive step, and declared them invalid. Nikon, which inherited the patent and the proceedings through its acquisition of RED, appealed that decision to the Intellectual Property High Court. On June 30, 2026, the court dismissed Nikon’s appeal and upheld the invalidation, as first reported by the legal news service MLex. Under Japanese patent law, an invalidated right is deemed never to have existed, so the effect is retroactive.

RED’s “Video camera” patent. Screenshot from Google Patents website.The patent that shaped an industry

To understand why this ruling matters, it helps to recall what the patent actually did. When RED introduced the RED ONE in 2007, REDCODE RAW made compressed RAW acquisition practical for the first time; earlier RAW-capable cameras like the DALSA Origin or ARRI’s D-20 recorded uncompressed sensor data with all the storage headaches that implies. RED patented the underlying approach broadly, and the result was that any manufacturer wanting to record compressed RAW inside a camera needed RED’s blessing, usually in the form of a license.

The RED ONE brought compressed RAW recording to market in 2007. Credit: RED Digital Cinema

The consequences rippled through nearly every product category we cover. Blackmagic developed BRAW, which is partially debayered in camera, as a way around the claims, and while the company never officially named RED’s patents as the reason for dropping CinemaDNG, the timing and the codec’s design spoke for themselves; a background we explored when comparing Blackmagic RAW and ProRes RAW. Atomos licensed the technology so ProRes RAW could live in its external recorders. Others simply stayed away from internal RAW altogether. The technical substance of REDCODE itself has been publicly picked apart before, most prominently in the Jinni.Tech video series dissecting the codec’s similarities to CineForm RAW.

RED V-Raptor with Z-mount. Image credit: REDA long list of failed challenges

Panasonic’s win stands out because the patent family had survived every serious attack for over fifteen years. Sony fought RED in US courts back in 2013 after RED accused its cinema cameras of infringement, and the patent emerged intact. In 2019, Apple challenged the US patent at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, presumably to free ProRes RAW from licensing obligations, and Apple’s petition was denied.

Then came the most dramatic chapter. After Nikon added internal N-RAW and ProRes RAW to the Z 9 via firmware, RED sued Nikon in May 2022. Nikon countersued, arguing the RAW patents were unenforceable because the technology had been made public before the application was filed. That question was never answered in court: the lawsuit was dismissed in April 2023, and less than a year later Nikon bought the company outright, a move we analyzed in depth in our look at what the Nikon and RED deal could mean for the industry.

A timeline of RED’s patent for internal raw video recording. Image credit: CineDNikon’s remarkable role reversal

This is where the story turns almost poetic. The same Nikon that once told a US court RED’s RAW patents should not be enforceable found itself, three years later, standing before a Japanese court defending the validity of those very claims against Panasonic. Having paid for RED, its patent portfolio became an asset worth protecting: licensing income from compressed RAW has long been considered a meaningful part of RED’s business, and curious market movements like the Ronin 4D’s ProRes RAW license dropping to $1 suggested the licensing landscape was already shifting after the acquisition.

The ruling also lands in a sensitive moment for Nikon. The company is betting heavily on cinema, with the Nikon ZR recording REDCODE RAW NE internally and a Z CINEMA series built on RED technology in its mid-term plans, while its imaging business is under pressure, as its latest quarterly results made clear. Losing a core patent in its home market, to its domestic rival Panasonic no less, is an unwelcome addition to that picture.

The Nikon ZR: Nikon’s first RED-inspired Nikon camera, targeted at video shooters, with – you guessed it – various flavors of internal raw video recording. Image credit: CineDWhat changes now, and what does not

A few important caveats keep this from being a free-for-all. The invalidation applies to Japan; the US patents and other international family members remain in force, and RED’s licensing agreements around the world do not simply evaporate. The Japanese patent would also have expired in April 2028 anyway, twenty years after its filing date, so the commercial window opened by this ruling is real but finite. And the JPO decision was a partial invalidation targeting specific claims, not a wholesale erasure of RED’s portfolio, which spans far more than this single patent.

Still, the symbolism is hard to overstate, and the practical implications in Japan are interesting. Panasonic already records compressed RAW internally: the LUMIX GH7 introduced internal ProRes RAW in 2024, and the S1RII and S1II followed, presumably under whatever arrangement RED’s patent required, though the terms were never made public. Seen in that light, the invalidation looks less like a door opener and more like Panasonic removing the tollbooth in its home market. Whether this changes how freely internal RAW spreads across Japanese-market cameras, and whether Nikon takes the fight to Japan’s Supreme Court, are the two questions worth watching next.

RED’s compressed RAW patent has fallen in Japan, struck down by Panasonic of all companies. Do you expect internal RAW to spread to more brands now? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below!

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