CORPORATE COMMUN. CONSULTANTS v. Columbia Pictures
| Decision Date | 27 December 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 81 Civ. 3236 (JES).,81 Civ. 3236 (JES). |
| Parties | CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANTS, INC., Plaintiff, v. COLUMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES INC. and Today Video, Inc., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
Curtis, Morris & Safford, P.C., New York City, for plaintiff; Gregor N. Neff, New York City, of counsel.
Arnold, White & Durkee, Houston, Tex., Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., New York City, for defendants; John F. Lynch, James J. Elacqua, Houston, Tex., Jared Jussim, New York City, of counsel.
Plaintiff, Corporate Communications Consultants, Inc. ("CCC"), a New Jersey corporation with its principal place of business in New York, commenced this action for patent infringement pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) (1976) against defendants Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. ("Columbia") and Today Video, Inc. ("Today Video"). CCC is the owner of U.S. Patent No. 4,096,523 (the "Rainbow Patent"). Columbia, a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in New York, and Today Video, a New York corporation with its principal place of business in New York, are users of color correction computers manufactured by Dubner Computer Systems, Inc. ("Dubner").
Plaintiff, CCC, alleges that the defendants' use of electronic color correction systems incorporating the Dubner computers infringes claims 1, 6-8, 17, 18, 34-36, 39 and 40 of the Rainbow Patent.1 CCC seeks damages for past infringement and an injunction prohibiting further infringement. CCC further alleges that defendants' infringement was willful and deliberate, and consequently asks the Court to award treble damages pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 284 and reasonable attorneys' fees pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 285.
Defendant Columbia denies infringement of any of the claims of the Rainbow Patent and argues that the patent is invalid. Columbia also asks for an award of reasonable costs and attorneys' fees.
Only Columbia appeared at trial to contest plaintiff's claims. Defendant Today Video and plaintiff have stipulated that Today Video will be bound by any final decision by this Court with respect to the validity of the claims of the Rainbow Patent and further that if any of the systems or methods of Columbia are found to infringe any claims of the Rainbow Patent, that ruling shall also apply to the corresponding systems and methods used by Today Video. Stipulation and Order dated July 7, 1982. The parties have agreed to sever the issue of damages pending a determination as to liability.
When color video programs originating on motion picture film are telecast, it is frequently necessary to color correct the video signals to make them pleasing to the eye. The need for these corrections may arise from peculiarities in the film emulsion, the electrical characteristics of the camera or the desire to enhance certain colors in a video picture.
CCC's invention, as described in and protected by the Rainbow Patent, is an electronic color correction system designed to make adjustments to the colors of video signals. The system comprises a film chain or telecine (which is a device for projecting light through film to a video tube), a control panel for adjustment of various color parameters (including color balance, luminance, hue and saturation), and a computer to record scene changes and color corrections made to each scene.
In the system's typical operation, a film is loaded into the telecine and advanced to the first frame, at which point a frame counter is engaged. The film is then advanced until a typical frame, which can serve as a basis for a standard value, is found. This frame is color corrected by an operator at the control panel who adjusts the potentiometers controlling the various color parameters. The values of these adjustments are then stored in the computer as standard values for the entire film.
The film is then rewound and run once again. Additional color corrections, if desired, are made on particular frames by stopping the film and adjusting the potentiometers. The color correction signals thus generated may be of greater or lesser voltage than the standard values previously stored for the film as a whole. The differences between these newly generated color corrections and the standard values are called "increments."
Once a desirable color mixture has been achieved for a particular frame, the standard values are subtracted from the total corrections and the remaining increments are stored in the computer along with the frame number at which the corresponding corrections occurred. Thus, the computer stores the increments separately from the previously stored standard.
When the entire film has been corrected, a videotape of the film incorporating all the corrections is made by rewinding the film to its starting position and running the projector forward again. The appropriate color corrections are made by the system at the proper frames by recalling the increments from memory and adding them to or subtracting them from the stored standard values. The total corrections are automatically applied to the video signals. The product is a color corrected videotape suitable for telecasting.
This is not the first electronic color correction system for video signals. Several such systems, of various capacities, were known in the prior art. See infra pp. 1435-1436. Indeed, the primary inventor of the system described in the Rainbow Patent had previously, along with others, obtained U.S. Patent No. 3,610,815 (the "Chromaloc Patent") for a less advanced electronic color correction system.
The Rainbow Patent asserts the novelty of its inventions by reciting two areas in which this system is an advance over the prior art.
The first recited advance of the system described in the Rainbow Patent is its ability to store color correction signals for use at a later time (hereinafter the "Incremental Standards Invention"). The patent discloses three embodiments of the Incremental Standards Invention.
The first embodiment facilitates reuse on later frames of color corrections made on earlier frames. Thus, if while viewing a certain scene, the operator remembers a similar scene which was previously corrected, he can recall those corrections and simply impose them on the current scene, thereby saving a significant amount of time and effort. He can also make further adjustments to the recalled signal for use with the current scene without affecting the values stored for the previous scene in any way. Prior art devices existed which could recall corrections to previous scenes and apply them unchanged to the current scene2 or which could recorrect prior corrections to the current scene.3 None existed which could both recall a correction made to a prior scene and apply it with modifications to the current scene as described in the Rainbow Patent.
The second embodiment of the Incremental Standards Invention facilitates compensation for machine drift. Machine drift occurs when, at any time after the color correction process begins for a particular film, the characteristics of the telecine or color correction system change. The Incremental Standards Invention permits the operator to set a new standard and the computer will automatically apply the previously stored increments to the standard at the appropriate frames. This is possible only because the system stores the increments separately from the standard. In all previous systems, the entire correction was stored as one value; if the machine drifted from its previous characteristics, the color correction process would have to begin anew in order to compensate for machine drift.
The third disclosed embodiment of the Incremental Standards Invention facilitates the utilization of the digital storage system. Since the computer memory stores the increments separately, it is possible to recall information with a greater degree of precision.
The second recited advance of the system described in the Rainbow Patent is scene by scene color correction of hue and saturation of the six separate primary and secondary colors (hereinafter the "Hue and Saturation Invention"). Prior art devices existed which were able to correct for color balance on a scene by scene basis4 or for hue and saturation on an overall basis,5 but no prior art device or system effectively enabled the operator to provide scene by scene hue and saturation control for separate colors. The advantage of hue and saturation controls is that they enable the operator to correct specific colors in a scene without affecting any other colors and without significantly affecting the white or grey background, something the color balance controls alone cannot do.
Columbia is accused of infringing plaintiff's Rainbow Patent at four of its facilities: EUE Screen Gems, Editel Chicago, Editel Los Angeles and Columbia Video Cassettes. The EUE and the two Editel facilities have substantially similar capabilities. They use a telecine connected to the Dubner color correction computer. This system permits scene by scene control of various color parameters including hue and saturation. The system is further able to recall and recorrect a prior scene or recall corrections made to a prior scene and apply them to the current scene with or without modifications. The system, however, does not store standards and increments separately and consequently cannot compensate for machine drift or fine-tune the color corrections to the extent that the Rainbow system can. CCC alleges that both the Incremental Standards Invention and the Hue and Saturation Invention are infringed by Columbia's activities at the EUE and Editel facilities.
The system in operation at the now defunct Columbia Video Cassettes facility used a Topsy computer instead of the Dubner computer. That system was able to recall and reuse prior corrections with changes in...
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