Originally posted by OregonJim While none of this is news, parts of it could be considered rumors...
Andre,
As far as I know, things were more complicated tha stated by Mr. Gandy.
Both Asahi and Zeiss "invented" the name Pentax for their own purposes, in
different times and unaware each other. Then, when Asahi Pentax cameras were
put on sale internationally, Asahi folks discovered that Carl Zeiss already
registered the Pentax trade name for some movie projectors on sale on
certain markets (South Africa, East Germany and maybe Finland). So Asahi
Pentax cameras sold in those markets were called either Asahiflex (like
older models) or Asahi Pentar for a few years.
In that same period Western and Eastern Zeiss companies were fighting for
getting Carl Zeiss and other famous Zeiss-related brand names, but the
Pentax trade mark was of very minor interest for them, since it was never
used for renowned Zeiss equipment.
At the end, Zeiss Jena lost the suit and all Zeiss brand names (such as
Contax, Sonnar, Tessar, and so on).
Later, when Pentax name was well established worldwide, I believe that Asahi
probably bought from VEB Pentacon (or maybe from Zeiss Oberkochen?) the
rights for using the Pentax name in those small markets too. I think it had
to be a cheap agreement, since at that time everybody "knew" that Pentax was
a Japanese camera company and not a Zeiss trade name. It is also possible
that Asahi paid nothing, since Eastern VEB Pentacon was no longer capable to
claim their old Zeiss trade marks on international markets. Just my guess
here.
Dario Bonazza
AOHC website Re: Pentax, a trademark bought from Zeiss???
AND on to multicoating..........
As I already wrote, Asahi didn't invent the multicoating, since they bought
patents from Optical Coatings Laboratories Inc. (OCLI), based in California.
The merit of Asahi Opt. Co. was to understand the importance of
anti-reflective coating, looking for the proper technology, developing their
own industrial process and put it into production at acceptable costs. That
marked a turning point in the evolution of photographic optics, allowing the
development of modern ultrawide-angle and wide-range zoom lenses http://www.mail-archive.com/pdml@pdml.net/msg04299.html