Canon applies for a soft focus APS-C CINI soft focus zoom lens

This patent is a bit of an odd duck but I think it may be signalling something more.  

With super-35 and also APS-C controlling the background blurr is obviously more difficult for normal kit zooms. This patent deals with getting around that.

Here is one image that describes what happens as you move the soft focus control of the lens, and how the elements shift for each stage.

The lens embodiment that we're curious about is:

Zoom ratio 2.83 
                     Wide Middle Far 
Focal distance       15.45 27.69 43.66 
F number              3.55  4.74  6.44 
Half field angle     41.48 26.26 17.37 
Image height         13.66 13.66 13.66 
length of the lens   90.41 83.09 88.74 
BF                   11.05 11.05 11.05 

While the lens itself isnt' that exciting and originally I wasn't going to even post this patent application. After some later thought, I decided it may be showing a trend in what Canon may be considering - a EF-M mini-CINI-EOS. 

The curious thing to also note is that this would indicate a camera with a APS-C sensor, not Super 35 as you would normally see from a canon CINI lens.  There no back focus changes as the lens goes from wide to far, which is a trend in CINI lenses more than regular zooms.

Japan Patent Application 2018-10282

EDIT: we had to do some major revisions to this article as apparently I need more coffee today.

Canon hasn't done any particular Super-35 mirrorless patents that we've seen.