Filmmaker Mode Used Commercially ‘at Least as Early’ as July 2020: UHDA

The Filmmaker Mode certification mark was deployed commercially “at least as early” as July 2020 on compliant TVs marketed by UHD Alliance member companies, said the association's statement of use posted Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. The statement is one of the last procedural steps needed before PTO issues a trademark registration certificate. The agency requires the statement to prevent applicants from hoarding trademarks they have no intention of using commercially. Using the Filmmaker Mode certification mark “denotes implementation of universally accessible means to disable post-production processing from the relevant consumer goods so that the content is experienced by the end user as intended by the original filmmaker,” says the statement. Filmmaker Mode is activated via a button on the remote or automatically through metadata when the TV detects incoming movie content. Once activated, Filmmaker Mode turns off motion smoothing, sharpening, TV noise reduction and other image enhancement processing, says the statement. Overscanning is permitted “only if signaled with the image,” it says. The rendered picture must maintain a D65 “white point,” it says. Measured in Kelvin, a display's white point setting is the color temperature emitted by the backlight and shown on screen. Filmmaker Mode has the announced support of Hisense, Kaleidescape, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, TP Vision and Vizio. UHDA debuted Filmmaker Mode in August 2019 and applied for the trademark the previous May (see 1908270001).