Minolta

Minolta Co., Ltd. (ミノルタ, Minoruta) was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras, lenses, camera accessories, binoculars, photocopiers, fax machines, and laser printers. Minolta Co., Ltd., which is also known simply as Minolta, was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1928 as Nichi-Doku Shashinki Shōten (日独写真機商店; meaning Japanese-German camera shop). In 1931, the company adopted Minolta for their cameras, an acronym for the German phrase "Mechanismus, Instrumente, Optik, und Linsen von Tashima". Between 1937 and 1962 they became known as Chiyoda Kōgaku Seikō K.K. (千代田光学精工㈱, meaning Chiyoda Optics and Precision Industry Co., Ltd.) before adopting the Minolta name as their final company iteration. The Minolta 'Rising Sun' logo was designed by Saul Bass in 1981. Minolta made the first integrated autofocus 35mm SLR camera system with the Alpha α/Maxxum 7000/AF in 1985. In 2003, Minolta merged with Konica to form Konica Minolta. On 19 January 2006, Konica Minolta announced that it was leaving the camera and photo business, and that it would sell a portion of its SLR camera business to Sony as part of its move to pull completely out of the business of selling cameras and photographic film. Between 2015 and 2016, Konica Minolta lost the rights to the Minolta US trademark for photographic equipment in a trial against JMM Lee Properties LLC, citing Trademark abandonment. Assuming control of several Minolta Trademarks in photographic industries by 2017, JMM Lee began licensing the name to Elite Brands Inc. This is an example of zombie trademarking