I thought some of you might find the above chart interesting. I bumped into it
here, and it shows the number of patent applications filed by HOYA Corporation over the past 8 years or so. You can see a steep rise beginning around September 2008, with October 2009 being the highest month with about 27 applications.
If we consider that HOYA acquired Pentax on March 31st 2008, we can probably assume that the increase in patent applications thereafter is due to Pentax. But let's remember that Pentax also make endoscopes, intraocular lenses, surgical loupes, biocompatible ceramics, spotting scopes and binoculars (and maybe other stuff too), so the patents could be from any and all of these areas.
...