Claude Friese-Greene's Colour Process

Page 2 of 3

• 1. A new world of colour
• 2. Kinemacolor versus Biocolour
• 3. A trick of the eye
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Kinemacolor versus Biocolour

Kinemacolor was a two-colour process developed by George Albert Smith in Brighton in 1906. It was an adaptation of Turner and Lee's (inventor Edward Turner and financier F. Marshall Lee) three-colour process of 1901/2 which was not successful and the rights of which Charles Urban bought after Turner's death.

'Charles Urban sued William Friese Greene's Biocolour company for infringement of patent...'

Charles Urban successfully marketed Kinemacolor and dominated the market with patents on the technology.

Urban sued William Friese Greene's Biocolour company for infringement of patent and litigation dragged on for three years. In 1913 Friese-Greene applied for Kinemacolor's patent to be revoked on the grounds of non-originality. The patent claimed that 'natural colour' was achieved with the Kinemacolor red/green process, but with only two colours involved this was technically impossible.

Eventually in 1915 the House of Lords ruled against Kinemacolor, after an appeal by Friese-Greene, breaking the commercial headlock Urban had on the technology.

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Published: 2007-04-18