Thanks, Dario,
Every Pentaxian should know that! vbg Besides, I'm a trivialist, by which
I mean, I know lots of useless little factoids, but not much about any
particular topic. I'll file your little Pentax Name History in my useless
facts file, where it will happily remain until needed - who knows, I may end up
on Jeopardy some day (do they have that in Europe? It's an American trivia game
show - very popular). They may have a Pentax topic some day (Hah!) vbg.
cheers,
frank
Dario Bonazza 2 wrote:
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
www.aohc.it
- Original Message -
From: Andre Langevin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 11:36 PM
Subject: Pentax, a trademark bought from Zeiss???
Stephen Gandy writes:
Even the Pentax name was originally a Zeiss Ikon VEB trademark
until bought by Asahi. It was originally derived from PENTaprism
and contAX.
Was it really bought to Zeiss Ikon?
Andre
--
--
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist
fears it is true. -J. Robert
Oppenheimer
