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Jerry Lewis and patents on video assist

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

In a post titled Video assist: The true history, Peter Glaskowsky assesses claims by Jerry Lewis about invention of video assist, which relates to the use of electronic video technology to support film making.

One has the line: Jim Songer didn't apply for patents on this work, which would have belonged to Video West in any event.

There is no explanation for why Video West didn't file patents.

Some patents are mentioned: US Patent 2,420,197 by Adolph H. Rosenthal, issued in 1947 with a 1944 filing date, describes combining film and video cameras on a common chassis. Each camera used its own lens, which means they couldn't record exactly the same view (a condition known as parallax). (...) A 1955 patent filed in 1953 by Arthur E. Reeves and Robert Gordon Nichols (U.S. 2,709,391) goes one more essential step by adding a second beamsplitter so that both an optical viewfinder and a video camera could be used simultaneously.

LBE wrote about the patent story with videorecorders several years ago.

Full post as published by IPBiz on July 20, 2009 (boomark / email).