Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Ken Iisaka is simply wrong. The US did not "seize" the patent rights of Zeiss or Leitz. The US rights were taken by the US government, as the British rights were taken by the UK government and the French rights by the French government, all under their respective Alien Properties Acts. (And the Germans reciprocated: Opel and Kodak AG were seized by the Nazis for the self-same reason, though these were restored when the Germans surrendered.) But those were rights within those countries only. Zeiss' and Leitz' patent rights in Japan were unaffected and remained the property of the two companies. What occurred was that the Allied Control Commission (NOT the US government!) let the Japanese know that they would not permit Zeiss and Leitz to go to law to protect their patent rights until peace treaties had been signed, so there was seven years of open theft of German intellectual property rights. By 1953, the Japanese had moved beyond the German exemplars and only Yashica attempted the same act later, with its "Baby Grey" -- they were promptly sued by Burleigh-Brooks and lost. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!