ABSTRACT
Part of Vari-Lite’s considerable patent portfolio included a patent on bi-directional communication between a lighting console and a fi xture. When other automated lighting manufacturers started using electrically erasable programmable readonly memory (EEPROM) to store the operating system in a luminaire, they needed bi-directional communication to update the software and confi rm that the data were transmitted correctly before erasing the existing operating system. Otherwise the fi xture would be inoperable if the data were corrupted during the transfer and installed anyway. So manufacturers started using “black box” uploaders, which were stand-alone devices made specifi cally for this purpose. They use the same data line as the controller but since they didn’t actually control the lights they didn’t infringe on the Vari-Lite patent.
