I read it more as a Zaxcom is acting like a Patent Troll here by taking a trivial idea (an idea that has been around for 25 years or more) and patenting a spin on it (i.e. the algorithim put into the DSP to crecombine the streams)
Which in turn forces Sonosax to play ball and have to spend extra capital to prove we aren't infringing on Zaxcom's patent - when in the past there was an un-written rule not to do this - as the companies are small
I agree that when a company spends many tens of millions of dollars to develop a technology over a number of years then it should receive a patent and it should be protected,
but when a company spends a trivial amount of time (probably no more than 200 man hours of development and maybe another 100 man hours to patent - based on technological concepts 25 years old) in order to block out competition as a predatory practice.
To give you an example I would never patent my tube power supply (even though I spent probably the same amount of time or more then Zaxcom did programming a DSP) as I feel it would benefit the community more then me being a selfish prick aimed at personal gain.
If Zaxcom had come up with some truely revolutionary idea with Neverclip maybe I would be more sympathetic but that is not the case here.
It's not that I disagree with any of these points. When two companies are in a public tit-for-tat blame game type of argument, you can never know for sure what the real story is. But the fact is that a patent was granted...so no matter whether it was a 'spin' on an old idea or not, the fact remains that Zaxcom owns the patent.
a) Just because Sax claims it's old technology doesn't make it so. The fact that the algorithm was 'revolutionary' was proven, in essence, by the fact that the patent was granted.
b) The amount invested has never had any bearing on the value of a patent. In fact, the simpler the idea the greater the need for a patent to protect from infringement.
