[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by egrand

I think this is the patent in question: https://www.google.com/patents/US283...ed=0CEEQ6AEwAg

Apparently Philips claimed invention of the idea of combining the color and luminance signals together.

Much too late to be a patent on basic combination of luminance and color subcarrier. What it is, is a proposal to put one color difference signal on the lower sideband of a high-frequency subcarrier, and the other color difference signal on the upper sideband of a mid-frequency subcarrier, with the two sidebands overlapping but interleaved, similar to the way NTSC chroma and luma are interleaved.

Here's a clear scan of the patent:
http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=0...iew+first+page