Motion picture monoliths, ARRI, launched legal proceedings challenging the validity of numerous lighting effects patents, claiming that many were incorrectly granted for technical solutions that weren’t really new. These claims have now been withdrawn by ARRI. Read on for more.

A Joint ARRI and Rotolight statement, issued today, declared: ARRI has agreed to a settlement with Rotolight, relating to Rotolight’s cinematic special effects “CineSFX®” patent portfolio in the US, UK, and Europe. ARRI no longer contests the validity of Rotolight’s patents and has withdrawn its Inter Partes Review in the US accordingly. Simultaneously, Rotolight has withdrawn its US District patent court action against ARRI. All ARRI products will continue to be offered as always. ARRI and Rotolight respect intellectual property and value fair competition.”

In what might be viewed as something of a ‘David & Goliath’ situation, Rotolight has had legal proceedings ruling in its favour after ARRI posed that patents had been granted ‘erroneously’ and that the technologies were state of the art and not new. Rotolight and its CineSFX and Magic Eye groups of patents, which include a total of 18 granted patents, cover user-customisable effects that have been granted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and across Europe.

Rotolight’s patents originated internally, in conjunction with Emmy Award-winning Visual FX Veteran and listed co-inventor Stefan Lange. Rotolight said: “Rotolight’s patents have since been cited as state of the art in recent patent filings by Apple, Panasonic, and Signify [Philips] amongst several others.” Rod Aaron Gammons, CEO of Rotolight, continued: “Rotolight invests millions each year into research and development in order to bring its customers the latest in lighting technology and innovation. However, such investments can only be made with the knowledge that those investments and the intellectual property, which underpins them will be respected. We are therefore pleased to have reached a settlement with ARRI, and shall continue to take all steps necessary to protect our intellectual property from ongoing infringement. In so doing, this will allow us to continue to invest in bringing industry-first innovations to market. Any other infringing companies should now proactively approach Rotolight directly, to secure a licensing agreement on reasonable commercial terms.

At the time ARRI stated: “These properties are often improperly exploited by rights holders, in an attempt to claim the right to be the sole owner of ‘inventions’ that are in fact already known technical solutions, or to make financial demands for their use.” Continuing that many lighting products’ effects have been “well established in the market for many years and their functionalities have been well-known in the art and established on the market for decades.” ARRI concluded, “We have to defend ourselves, including to protect our customers and the industry against intellectual and industrial property rights that do not protect an innovation but instead improperly limit the available technical options.”

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