The remark was directed to cell phones and early smart phones without front
cameras. You could note iPhones are not listed in the complaint as infringing
devices only the iPad3 and MacBook Pro. This has a bearing:
From the
Description of the Preferred Embodiment.
In an application such as
providing illumination for a video camera, feedback circuit 160 measures the
video output signal from the camera and provides a feedback signal 260 that
allows adjustment of the light output pf LEDs 150 in order to optimize the video
signal. In one such embodiment, as shown in FIG. 5, the controlled LED light
source is integrated into a handheld camcorder 500. In one such embodiment, the
video camera circuit also provides pulse sync signal 170 in order to synchronize
the light output to the video light gathering time windows. In another such
embodiment, feedback circuit 160 measures the color balance of the video output
signal, and provides separate feedback intensity control for each of a plurality
of (e.g., two or three) separate groups of color LEDs, for example, red, green,
and blue. In one embodiment, green LEDs such as part number NSPG 500S and blue
LEDs such as part number NSPB 500S, both available from Nichia Chemical
Industries Ltd. of Japan and Nichia America Corp., 3775 Hempland Road,
Mountville Pa., 17554 are used, and red LEDs such as part number HLMP-C115
available from Hewlett Packard Company.
It's my understanding from
comments by someone at Datacolor that white LEDs are used for the Apple LCD
displays backlights including Retina displays. Retina displays are the only
feature I could see unique to both the iPad3 and MacBook Pro (with Retina
Display). There are two types of LED display backlights, either using white
LEDs, or color component (RGB) LEDs that would be amenable to the method for the
video camera light described above.
The LED backlit LCD displays use
something called IPS (In Plane Switching) Technology from Samsung to increase
the contrast ratios resulting in more accurate remapping color temperatures in
the pixel domain using color look up tables. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to
individual color LEDs isn't used to control video camera illumination color
balance however.
There are several limits to using the LCD display as a
video light even with RGB LED backlights individually controlled by PWM. It
boils down to not knowing the color content of the LCD display unless it is
intentionally fixed (e.g. white). There's also the issue of not knowing the
reflective index of objects or the scene in the video camera field of
view.
It's likely that the patent neither produces a useful effect for the
described embodiment or isn't practicable for the above two reasons. If Apple
indeed uses white backlight LEDs they wouldn't infringe anyway although you
could imagine someone writing software to white out your screen and using the
increased dynamic range of an IPS display in conjunction with the brightness
control (which does have 256 levels) to approximate the purported effect. The
lack of useful information on your screen makes it impractical just as it would
be for RGB backlight LEDs.
iSight cameras purportedly use an ambient light
sensor that looks like a really tiny dot to control automatic screen brightness.
It's actually separate than the video image array sensor. It happens to be
collocated with the image array sensor because it's used to control synthetic
aperture (image array sensor sensitivity). The use of a video camera to control
screen brightness is a bugaboo. It's purpose is controlling illumination color
balance.
Were these suppositions to hold true Apple would likely have no
trouble convincing a reasonable jury that they do not infringe. Likely
only a troll would try to proceed to trial in the face of discovery or expert
testimony even should they find their own expert witness with an as creative or
at least confusing explanation as Oracle used for symbolic references. There is
no readily apparent use for a video camera in practicing the patent other than
described above in an apparently unpracticed embodiment and an NPE can't compete
with practitioners of the art or closest arts for expertise. You could imagine
putting on a credible defense might be viewed as paramount.
I used to be
employed as a digital video engineer at Compression Labs in the early 80's
designing video compression equipment. This predates their foray as Forgent
Networks, CLI's successor in interest, claiming patent infringement by JPEG by
most of two decades.
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