Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 12:44 AM 4/16/98 -0400, you wrote: >I am not sure of the details of how these patents ended up in Japanese >hands, but what you are calling "theft", others may call "war reparations" With all respect to the group, I am relatively certain of the details. Both Japan and Germany lost the war. The Japanese camera industry began using German patents (primarily Leitz camera patents and Zeiss lens patents) without the permission of the German companies involved. When the Germans protested and sought the protection of the Allies, the Allies responded that they were attempting to foster a conversion of the Japanese industrial network from guns to butter, and they would rather the Japanese built commercial cameras than military rangefinders and gunsights. Zeiss and Leitz did threaten litigation in '54, once the Allied controls were lifted, but by that point the damage had been done. And, of course, the Japanese moved beyond the Zeiss patents once they recognized how expensive their lenses were to duplicate; both Nikon and Canon developed optics less expensive to manufacture by the middle 1950's and had ceased directly copying Zeiss designs. War reparations? No. Thefts? Yes. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!