Motorola Mobility, Tivo and Hewlett-Packard Company have been hit with a patent infringement lawsuit by Multi-Format Inc, a privately held New Jersey company. The lawsuit was filed on July 28, 2011 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The patent-in-suit is RE38,079 (the ‘079 patent), entitled “Multi-format audio/video production system” which a reissue of US5,537,157. The ‘079 patent is related to video production, photographic image processing, and computer graphics design and discloses a multi-format video production system capable of professional quality editing and manipulation of images intended for television and other applications, including HDTV programs.

Multi-format was in news when it sued Apple for patent infringement over sale of video content on iTunes Store. It was also in news when it dropped a DVD patent case against Amazon.com, Best Buy, Buy.com, Circuit City, Costco, Fry's Electronics, Kmart, Radio Shack, Sears Roebuck & Co., Target and Wal-Mart.

In comparison to the original patent US5537157, the re-issued ‘079 patent includes the following changes:

Claims 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 from the original patent have been amended in the re-issued patent

Claims 16, 19, 25 have been deleted/cancelled from the original patent

Claims 26-37 have been added in the re-issued ‘079 patent.

Relevant diagrams from the ‘079 patent:

Source: USPTO and Freepatentsonline.com