Originally Posted by JanG 
I remember a post on this site, in which someone claimed, Pentax was using a simple technology and blocking the other manufacturers by patents, so that they could do it, too, but have to pay a price for it.
That would fit perfectly for the Pentax vs. Nikon patents in this thread.
I can easily believe that. The Pentax patent seems quite broad and difficult to circumvent if you are after a sensor with per-pixel RGB values that is easy to manufacture.