Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/01/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 08:34 AM 1/31/98 -0800, Stephen Gandy wrote: >an oft repeated story is that the German and Japanese patents were taken >as war prizes by the Allies after WWII. > >if this (or some variation of it) is true, how could Zeiss NOT share >patents with Leica IF Zeiss no longer controlled them? Because the story isn't true. Upon the declaration of War, the US and UK seized patents controlled by enemy companies located IN those nations, but couldn't reach, say, German patents not controlled by the American branch of the German company. Zeiss had been quite restrictive about this, while Leitz had made a general assignment of patent rights to ELNY. Thus, the US Government could assign these rights to Kardon without a problem, but they couldn't assign the rights to the Contax RF, as these rights were never owned by Carl Zeiss USA. I do not recall that Zeiss ever patented the original coating process in the US: it was "geheimgehalt", or 'close-hold' until July, '40, by which time Wollensak and Kodak had patented their processes -- and the Kodak process was independently developed but identical to Zeiss's. In any event, the issue here is that of the German patent rights owned by Zeiss and the German production line owned by Leitz -- it was an internal German matter, and the Allies had no say in such. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!