Canon Patent Application: Canon 35mm 1.4

Even though the highly rated 35mm 1.4L II has only been out for 4 years, Canon's lens designers never rest.

It takes years to develop a new lens, and this may be the first signs of the 35mm 1.4 III, years ahead of actual release.   We have our doubts that Canon would release such a lens for the EF, however, Canon has also made no statements about end of life for the EF mount, so research appears to be continuing with EF lens designs.

Of course, this patent could also be simply for exploring ways of reducing longitudinal chromatic aberrations without using an BR element to do so as well.

From the patent application;

An optical system in which a positive or negative lens unit is disposed on the object side of a substantially symmetric Gaussian type optical system can reduce the Petzval sum and favorably reduce the curvature of field and the astigmatism . In order to satisfactorily reduce longitudinal chromatic aberration and lateral chromatic aberration, it is important to appropriately set the power arrangement and the material of each lens. If these factors are inappropriate, it becomes difficult to obtain high optical performance while satisfactorily reducing chromatic aberration. 

The element design is certainly not that of the current 35mm 1.4.

focal length  34.30 
F number       1.45 
Field angle   32.24 
Image height  21.64 
total length 137.32 
BF            39.00

Again, with all the patent applications we publish none of them are guarantees that the patent application will be actually used, however, it shows areas of active research in Canon that may result in future products.

Japan Patent Application 2018185389