
Canon filed a patent 2012-8344 in Japan for a 55-110mm f/2.0 zoom lens:
Last week Kodak filed a lawsuit against Fujifilm for patents infringement. This week it’s Samsung’s turn. Any guesses who is going to be sued next week? Here are both press releases – I have hyperlinked the related patents:

Similar to Fujifilm, Panasonic also filed a patent 2011-258729 in Japan for an organic sensor that can change the thickness of the organic film by changing the wavelength. Here is a machine generated translation of the patent description taken from the Japanese Patent Office:

Olympus filed a patent in Japan (2011-259166) for a vari-angle LCD screen that can be flipped to pretty much any camera side/angle: In addition to the US patent for an organic sensor, Fujifilm filed a similar patent in Japan (2011-253861). Here are some more details from the Japanese patent application (Google translation):

Fuji was granted a patent 8053661 for an organic sensor. Some readers speculated yesterday that this sensor may be used in the upcoming Fuji LX mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. From the patent’s summary: An object of the present invention is to provide an organic photoelectric conversion layer exhibiting high photoelectric conversion efficiency, low dark current and high-speed responsivity, […]