Originally posted by Kunzite Precisely.
Which means, they made sure they could continue to use the Pentax brand.
(...)
Or the opposite: they made sure they would be prepared to successfully switch from the Pentax brand to the Ricoh brand.
Ricoh are used to external growth (they purchased Savin, Gestetner, Lanier, Rex-Rotary, Monroe, Nashuatec, Ikon, IBM Printing Systems and more) and either to discontinue the brand of the acquired business or to keep marketing products under their original brand name.
Originally posted by Kunzite (...)
By the way, the level of inside info with knowledge about a soon to be launched product, and the level needed to have access to the specifics about the Hoya-Ricoh deal are IMO worlds apart.
(...)
Shall we understand that you are implying that
Ooku is purposely trying to deceive us?
Originally posted by Kunzite (...)
OoKU doesn't even say what's the source. Maybe it's you.
???
I discovered on 15 November 2017 that the Pentax trademark still belonged to Hoya, not Ricoh. I'm specific on the date because of
this post on Forum Pentax. At that time I was investigating the links between various camera and lens Kickstarter projects using different brand names (Meyer-Optik Görlitz, Oprema Jena, Emil Busch A.-G. Rathenow, C.P. Goerz, Ihagee Elbaflex) and had discovered that all of the trademarks belonged to net SE, a German group that was using some kind of a crowdfunding Ponzi scheme and went bankrupt less than a year after that. I made a search on Pentax just for fun and...
I have discussed the ownership of the Pentax trademark several times on Pentax Forums, the most recent time being yesterday following a remark made by
JPT...
Originally posted by JPT (...)
As for the idea of Ricoh prioritizing Ricoh branded products over Pentax, that’s ridiculous in the context of the above and the amount of Ricoh products that were abandoned (GXR, GX200, CX, PX). It just happens to be the case that several Ricoh products are ready at this timing.
...a tongue-in -cheek comment on my side (duly flagged as such, one's never too cautious on this forum)...
Originally posted by Mistral75 Nah, Ricoh Imaging are focusing on the Ricoh brand and they are just about to sell their rights to the Pentax trademark together with all the K-mount and 645-mount related intellectual property rights to an unknown Chinese company, which will use the Pentax brand to launch camera and lens projects on Kickstarter.
[/tongue-in-cheek]
...a question from
RonHendriks1966, which I answered as precisely as possible...
Originally posted by RonHendriks1966 Question
Does Ricoh have to pay to use the Pentax brand name because it is owned by Hoya? What would be normal business. A yearly fee, or they bought the right for like 10 years or what?
...and a question from
ffking, which I again answered as precisely as possible.
Originally posted by ffking Do we know for a fact that Hoya owns the Pentax trade name?
So, in a sense, you might claim that this is a four-people conspiracy (
JPT,
RonHendriks1966,
ffking and myself), led and fuelled by yours truly
, that enticed
Ooku into making the statement I discovered this morning when accessing Pentax Forums:
Originally posted by OoKU Pentax ownership belongs to HOYA, the right to use belongs to Ricoh, and the lease contract expires in 2020.
Maybe this is why Ricoh does not continue to develop Pentax.
But no, taking the risk of disappointing you, I must confess that I am not the source of
Ooku's statement.
Until this morning I had no idea of the termination date of the brand licence agreement signed by and between Hoya and Ricoh and pertaining to the Pentax trademark. I didn't even know whether this agreement was unlimited or time-limited, read
my answer to RonHendriks1966.