American patents could be voided in Europe

[Anaconda_]

I just read a report that in retaliation to Greenland threats, European leaders are planning to introduce trade blocks with America, and part of that is a potential voiding of American patents. What could this mean for the camera industry? Suddenly everyone can put compressed raw into their cameras without having to argue with RED? 

https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0119/c90000-20415649.html
"The mechanism would allow immediate retaliation, including punitive tariffs, market bans, financial sanctions, and the suspension of U.S. patents and licences, without recourse to the United Nations or the World Trade Organization."

[eatstoomuchjam]

As Doctorow said, Europe could also finally remove anti-circumvention laws since one of the only reasons to implement them in the first place was to avoid tariffs from the US.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

On 1/19/2026 at 8:21 AM, Anaconda_ said:

I just read a report that in retaliation to Greenland threats, European leaders are planning to introduce trade blocks with America, and part of that is a potential voiding of American patents. What could this mean for the camera industry? Suddenly everyone can put compressed raw into their cameras without having to argue with RED? 

https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0119/c90000-20415649.html
"The mechanism would allow immediate retaliation, including punitive tariffs, market bans, financial sanctions, and the suspension of U.S. patents and licences, without recourse to the United Nations or the World Trade Organization."

The US government twats underestimates how angry Europe is over the greenland BS and the damage we can do.

The EU and UK are one of the biggest economies in the world along with China and the US.

I am not sure why the US would want to piss us off.

But we could ask Canada and Australia to join a customs union.

We would even go all the way and have them join the EU.

UK could rejoin too.

We could sell the trillion dollars of US bonds and crash the US economy.

But what is rarely talked about is the US services industry.

They are deeply embedded in European life but this might change.

VISA, Mastercard, Apple, X and many American banks could suddenly find themselves kicked out of Europe and replaced by European companies.

Imagine the damage that would do to the Americans. eBay and PayPal would lose almost half of their global market share.

[Ilkka Nissila]

On 1/25/2026 at 9:51 PM, Andrew - EOSHD said:

The US government twats underestimates how angry Europe is over the greenland BS and the damage we can do.

The EU and UK are one of the biggest economies in the world along with China and the US.

I am not sure why the US would want to piss us off.

But we could ask Canada and Australia to join a customs union.

We would even go all the way and have them join the EU.

UK could rejoin too.

We could sell the trillion dollars of US bonds and crash the US economy.

But what is rarely talked about is the US services industry.

They are deeply embedded in European life but this might change.

VISA, Mastercard, Apple, X and many American banks could suddenly find themselves kicked out of Europe and replaced by European companies.

Imagine the damage that would do to the Americans. eBay and PayPal would lose almost half of their global market share.

You are correct that the economic impact of European countries replacing those services with our own systems would be huge on the US. Also the loss of influence would be significant. But I suspect somehow that Europe doesn't have the self-confidence to actually go through it. They should, though. But Trump's admin is quick to anger and reacts to even small threats to their plans. Starmer threatened to shut down Twitter/X after the latest scandal (of AI generated sexually explicit images of users based on their photos). JD Vance has said that if UK shut down UK residents' access to X then the US will pull out from Nato. This is how much they are intent on bringing a Trump style admin and politics to UK. I think we need to coordinate action with Canada, UK, EU, Japan, Australia and develop alternatives to all this technology and services and eventually sell all financial assets in the US and shut down Meta, Alphabet, X, use a new financial services system which not US based or influenced and simply live in a world free of US influence and coercion now that that country has revealed its true colors. The remaining problem is the majority of military power is now concentrated under undemocratic, autocratic governments which could cause problems if they feel they are losing the economic and social influence over the democratic and free parts of the world. 

[Andrew - EOSHD]

Replacing a leech like VISA as just one example should absolutely be done but I don't think it's a lack of self confidence, I think it's just really tough to do, both legally and in terms of the policy and the politics of it, the EU has always been about encouraging big American corporate types to come in and set up shop, and invest, so it would send a very bad message to all US businesses that they're no longer welcome to invest billions in the European economy, and it would cost a heck of a lot of European jobs as well if they all pulled out, they are such big companies. Practically it would be almost impossible, like taking the egg out of a pancake mixture.

I personally though, as a consumer, want to see many of these big companies gone.

I want to see eBay vanish or be forcibly bought by the EU and split up into multiple European companies, PayPal can fuck off, VISA, Mastercard, many of the US banks, all can go and do their business elsewhere as can Tesla. There are numerous US companies that have a near-monopoly or duopoly, or act like a cartel. Some have built valuable infrastructure, like Amazon - both in terms of physical goods distribution, and online with their cloud services. Kicking them out would be very unpleasant for Europe and for jobs... But it might have to be done if the US doesn't change course.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

On 1/19/2026 at 8:21 AM, Anaconda_ said:

Suddenly everyone can put compressed raw into their cameras without having to argue with RED?

Except it's Nikon now isn't it? A Japanese company owns the patent.

Europe voiding the US patents of a Japanese company...

Now that is very risky politics.

[eatstoomuchjam]

1 hour ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

Replacing a leech like VISA as just one example should absolutely be done but I don't think it's a lack of self confidence, I think it's just really tough to do, both legally and in terms of the policy and the politics of it

If Brazil can do it with Pix, I'm sure the European Union with twice the population (across all member states) can do it as well.

Visa/Mastercard are still plentiful here, but Pix is huge and, being owned/controlled by the Central Bank of Brazil, I suspect that it has both lower per-transaction fees than the commercial counterpart, but also keeps the money in the country vs shipping it abroad.

[Ilkka Nissila]

7 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

Except it's Nikon now isn't it? A Japanese company owns the patent.

Europe voiding the US patents of a Japanese company...

Now that is very risky politics.

Nikon argued that the patents (in the lawsuit RED against Nikon) are invalid  because RED demonstrated the patented features more than one year before applying for it, so this is against the rules and the patent should not have been granted. Jinni Tech used this argument before apparently successfully. Since Nikon argued the patents are invalid they should not enforce them otherwise they are being dishonest and opportunistic. The patents have been in any case interpreted too broadly and should be specific to a using particular methods described in the patent and not considered generic to all kinds of visually lossless raw compressions in video. The "invention" is rather trivial in any case since similar things (visually lossless raw compression) were used for stills compression before and the raw video file is just a sequence of stills images. Nikon's method of raw video compression is different from RED's and Intopix has a patent on it anyway. I think the RED patents were enforced in such a broad way simply because it was an American company and the purpose of the US Patent system is just to help American companies gain advantages in the market, whether merited or not.