RED have embroiled a lot of the camera industry in legal action over the years. One of these companies is Atomos.
Since the Nikon buyout of RED, controversial ex-CEO of Atomos, Jeromy Young has returned to head the company. In a PR statement from Melbourne titled “Atomos Welcomes Nikon Acquisition of RED“, a lot of enthusiastic noises were made.
Why?
In my opinion, the enthusiasm is because Atomos have a chance with Nikon to renegotiate or nullify their onerous licensing agreement for RAW recording. The agreement with RED in 2019 was necessary as Atomos were being sued for the use of compressed RAW codecs like ProRes RAW in their portable recorders, so now have to pay RED royalties on every sale (although the exact terms of the deal aren’t public).
Atomos have worked closely with Nikon since the peak of the DSLR revolution and the advent of a clean HDMI feed on the Nikon D800, so already have a good relationship.
Atomos are not alone in wanting to renegotiate terms with Nikon now RED is a subsidiary. There’s a string of people and companies that RED have prosecuted (or is that persecuted?) in the past, small and large. For example, they forced me into signing a non-disparagement agreement with RED over a satirical blog post. Groundless legal bullying. Can I now go to Nikon, and ask for this to be cancelled? Should I sue for compensation? I really am considering getting in touch with the Japanese.
Jarred Land, current boss of RED (in Vegas at the F1 race with Brad Pitt) has a long history of litigation and defending patents at the company
A certain Oakley’s founder in Tokyo with Land.
These cases of ‘dodgy’ law and misuse of law, have the potential to haunt RED as they close the deal with Nikon, and it could be that the obligation now falls at Nikon’s door to put right some of these skeletons in the closet – not least in my opinion, I think they owe Bruce at Jinni.tech compensation for the destruction of his business.
The other controversial aspect of this is over at Atomos, Jeromy Young has been welcomed back into the fold as CEO. Mr Young you will remember was embroiled in a national scandal during covid in Australia which I covered here on YouTube:
There’s also the unfair dismissal case with their Apple-recruit Estelle McGechie, who says she was fired for investigating securities fraud. (Petapixel has the details).
No doubt Mr Young maintains some sort of relationship with Nikon, due to their past history of collaboration, and would be effective at re-negotiating the RAW royalties deal, or suggesting an acquisition of Atomos to Nikon.
But first, perhaps Nikon should do their due diligence on both RED and Atomos.
AI looms over videography industry
We could be seeing quite a few more acquisitions in the camera market. This is because AI tools like Sora are spooking the industry.
Such tools could replace a large chunk of commercial videography output, which was previously shot on mirrorless cameras or Atomos recorders.
If the forecast says far fewer ‘traditional’ filmmaking tools will be sold in, say, only 2-5 years time – now might be a good time for a company like Atomos to consider this the ‘peak’ and throw in the towel with a corporate buyout.
This is all just my opinion of course, and the camera industry might continue to thrive – but I see real trouble ahead with AI.
Perhaps RED, in bailing out now, have played a smart move?
