Originally posted by normhead
Everyone has their own personal timeline and priorities, nothing wrong with that. The thing is, with the 70-200 patent coming out in 2012, Pentax could have let us know a lot earlier the were designing better , faster focusing lenses. The people watching the patents told us the FF was coming more than a year before Pentax did. But even if they had, if there's something you have to do now, , knowing a company is going to release something next year doesn't help.
That doesn't work that way, and in fact, in some countries can be considered breaking laws and regulations related to trade and commerce. Let me explain:
If a company issues some news about new products being developed, this information can (and will) affect the perceived (speculative) market value of this company's shares. Shareholders take decisions considering this information. OTOH, if the company issues news about discontinuing such and such product, then the perceived value drops...
Filing for a patent DOES NOT MEAN the company is going to release a new product. It just means they want to protect an invention (device) from being used by others (competition), even if they never use it. Sometimes the idea behind a patent is just to be able to "charge" another company for the right to use such device. In this case, the term is "royalties".