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Post by Ales - iStar Optical on Dec 17, 2011 6:46:57 GMT -5
Just wanted to inform everyone that first few of our second generation 140 F12 LF APOs are nearly finished and we hope to be able to test first two units in our European lab in about two week time. These are completely redesigned APOs based on the original idea which we wanted to patent. After seeing some patent breaches mainly from Asian manufacturers Im no longer sure if we should spend money, time and great efforts to have these new triplets patented. The fact is that idea behind this is truly new and exciting. But if any manufacturer decides to copy this idea and produce similar triplets for them selves, there is not much we could do about it. So the question remains.. patent or not to patent? Any thoughts??
The 160 F12 second generation should be finished by first week of January, we will test this triplet by middle of January 2012 and we will keep everyone posted.
We are going to design and produce several more lenses in R30 Anastigmatic style, I will create a new post about these soon. These R30 doublets are quickly becoming a new higher standard in achromatic doublets and we hope to see many more people checking and ordering these newly designed lenses out. All R30 Anastigmats are found in ASTERIA line of refractors.
Cheers,
Ales - ISTAR Optical, owner
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Post by jimcurry on Dec 21, 2011 5:30:25 GMT -5
Ales:
If you patent you provide your competition with a road map to quick reverse engineering. If you don't patent you make them work for it. If they infringe on your patent what kind of recourse do you think you'll have half way around the planet?
Jim
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Post by Ales - iStar Optical on Dec 21, 2011 13:24:29 GMT -5
Hello Jim,
this is exactly what I thought.. we wont have any effective legal tools to fight one of more Asian producers on this issue. So we will most likely stick only to the US patent, forget the WW patent.
cheers,
Ales
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Post by Watcher3 on Dec 23, 2011 2:46:02 GMT -5
What will the differences be in the second generation?
I agree. US patant only, unless you got a boatload of money to spend defending worldwide patents. At least with the US patent, you'll be in the history books as the inventor!
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Post by Mike on Dec 23, 2011 20:01:01 GMT -5
Yes, we are going to pursue a US only patent. Trying to keep some unscrupulous company from duplicating and selling your product is like trying to hold back a waterfall. I used to work for an astro company in the early 2000s. The owner developed a great product and we were selling so fast we couldn't keep them in stock. We were using an Asian company to build them. After a year we started seeing the very same product showing up in another US astro company and a British astro company. We even bought one to verify it. It was identical just had another name. A lawyer said it could cost 10s of thousands to enforce the patent and it would still not keep them from producing it.
I will let Ales explain the differences in the new design.
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Post by Ales - iStar Optical on Dec 24, 2011 6:03:00 GMT -5
Hello again everyone. The difference between the Older LaF LF APO and new one is simply huge. The new style offers a completely re-designed optical system, the one we plan on patenting in US soon. It uses a totally different glass types compared to the first generation and is also designed to allow for a greater degree of production tolerance span. So the optical quality should be similar even if producetion manages to produce a slightly lesser quality lens or lenses in this triplet. Some other triplets are very sensitive to any production imperfection and the image quality is quickly degrading. I can not discuss the optical system in detail but the idea behind this design is following. We are able to achieve a true APO or Super APO performance with extremely small spot size (at around one pixel size 7x7nm) in scopes from F/9.8 to F/15 and above by using a less expensive ED glass types like short flints/ lanthanum flints, etc.. glass types which were used in the past but could not produce desirable image quality.. now we were able to overcome these shortcomings by developing this new patent pending design. So the "magic" is not in some new, super glass type used, but rather in a new way of thinking about how a simple triplet can work. So anyone looking for an F9 to F15 APO should seriously consider our new Istar system. Give us a few more weeks to come up with first fully tested production units, Mike Harden and me will keep everyone posted.
Kind regards,
Ales
ISTAR Optical
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