13 Years of Dispute: Panasonic Overturns RED'amp;s RAW Patent - Nikon Loses Appeal
[16:49 Sat,8.August 2026 � by Thomas Richter] ���
For nearly 20 years, RED’s patent for in-camera compressed RAW dictated who was allowed to record internal RAW—and at what price. Now, Japan’s Intellectual Property High Court has upheld the annulment of the Japanese patent in Japan, marking the first time the patent has been declared invalid.
Panasonic had filed the invalidation request against the RED RAW patent in Japan as early as April 28, 2022. The annulment was originally granted in 2024, but did not take effect because Nikon immediately appealed the decision, which it has now lost. Ironically, Panasonic’s lawsuit forced Nikon to defend a patent that Nikon itself had challenged four years prior—though Nikon&s acquisition of RED in 2024 changed the situation, making Nikon the owner of the RED RAW patent itself.
What it&s about
At the center of the dispute is Japanese Patent 5231529, simply titled "Video camera"—the Japanese version of the patent filed internationally in April 2007 by RED founder James Jannard and color scientist Graeme Nattress. The patent forms the basis for RED’s RAW, which is the in-camera compression of raw sensor data before debayering—meaning before the data from differently colored sensels is assembled into a full-color pixel.
An important part of this method is utilizing the correlation of the Bayer color channels. Put simply, values from neighboring green sensels are used for red or blue sensels, for example, to calculate difference values. Such differences are easier to compress than the original RGB values. This efficient yet lossless compression made the recording of high-quality RAW data in-camera possible in the first place, and through patent protection, became a unique selling point for RED’s cameras.
Nikon RED
However, following Panasonic&s invalidation request, the Japan Patent Office (JPO) concluded that this exact combination was merely an assembly of previously known technology with no inventive step—and declared the contested claims invalid.
RAW compression before RED
The deciding factor was a US patent filed back in 2004 by Chih-Ta Sung and Yin Lan/Taiwan Imagingtek US 2006/0061822 A1, which already described a method for compressing raw sensor data in a color camera at that time. Even then, this patent exploited the strong similarities between color channels, storing difference values such as R–G or B–G instead of complete red and green values—precisely what the RED patent later described as well.
Graphic from the old US 2006/0061822 A1 patent
The entire dispute revolved around a single technical question: Does this older method operate before or after debayering? Nikon argued that it dealt with full-color data after the demosaicing stage—meaning RED’s approach to mosaic data would be fundamentally different. However, the court followed Panasonic&s argument: the older patent clearly did not exclusively describe already-demosaiced RGB data, but rather the processing of the various colored R, G, G, and B sensels—the raw Bayer sensor data. Consequently, this eliminated one of the most crucial alleged differences between RED&s patent and the prior art.
Background: unsuccessful challenges against the RED RAW patent
The ruling is making major waves because RED&s RAW patent has previously survived every single legal challenge. For instance, RED sued Sony in 2013 and Nokia in 2016 for patent infringement and won. Apple attempted in 2019 to overturn the US counterpart via an Inter Partes Review at the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board in order to make its own ProRes RAW attractive for recording in professional cameras—the petition was dismissed, and ProRes RAW remained patent-protected and subject to licensing fees.
The impact of this monopoly on RAW recording influenced the entire industry: in 2021, Kinefinity removed CinemaDNG from current cameras; Blackmagic replaced internally compressed CinemaDNG with BRAW using partial debayering; DJI’s Ronin 4D operated for years without ProRes RAW; and Atomos licensed RED’s patents to offer ProRes RAW in its external recorders.
In 2022, Nikon updated the Z9 via firmware 2.0 to include internal N-RAW and ProRes RAW, prompting RED to sue Nikon. Nikon countered by arguing that the patents were unenforceable because the technology had been publicly demonstrated before the filing date. The lawsuit was dismissed in April 2023, and in March 2024 Nikon announced the acquisition of RED for approximately 85 million dollars—turning the attacker into a defender of the valuable RED RAW patent.
What does the invalidation of RED RAW in Japan mean?
Directly speaking, Panasonic&s successful lawsuit changes nothing outside of Japan: RED RAW patents concerning the US and Europe remain in force, as do existing license agreements. An interesting fact: the Japanese patent would have expired in April 2028 anyway, 20 years after its filing.
Panasonic GH7
In Japan, however, this means that Panasonic no longer has to pay licensing fees to Nikon—since Lumix models have long been recording internally compressed RAW in the form of ProRes RAW, starting with the GH7 in 2024, followed later by the S1RII, S1II, and S1IIE, among others. In the rest of the world, however, license payments remain in effect. The question is whether any (other) manufacturer will take the Japanese invalidation as an opportunity to challenge Nikon&s RED RAW patent in another country as well.
