In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, both Germany and Japan were defeated nations under the control of the Allies. While the situations were a bit different in these countries, they were both thoroughly defeated and thoroughly under the thumb of occupying powers.
One principal motivation for the Allies was to shift Japanese production from warlike items, such as warships and ordnance and rangefinders, to more peaceable items, such as oil tankers, automobiles, and civilian sport optics and cameras.
It did not take the two major Japanese optical companies, Canon and Nikon, both still linked, slightly, from their Prewar common origin, long to recognize that they might get away with thievery on a massive scale. And, so, both borrowed extensively from the optical and mechanical patents of the major German works, Carl Zeiss, Zeiss Ikon, and Ernst Leitz Wetzlar. Both Japanese companies simply took the Leica shutter for their own, for instance, and Nikon adopted the Zeiss Ikon Contax shutter and rangefinder without so much as a "by-your-leave", while Canon did the same for the Leica thread-mount design. All of these items were still under patent protection in their home markets. And both companies simply took patented Zeiss lens designs and produced them as their own.
The German companies, especially Zeiss and Zeiss Ikon, protested mightily, but were told by the two Allied Control Commissions to get lost. The Allies were not going to allow the German companies to interfere with the civilianization of Japanese industry, especially with Nikon, which was, and remains, part of the Mitsubishi Group, arguably the largest and almost certainly the most influential of the Prewar Japanese industrial cartels.
These patent rights had NOT been seized as "war booty" by the Allies. That is, the Allies seized the intellectual property rights of all enemy companies on the outbreak of war, but what was seized were only the internal rights. Therefore, for instance, the US owned the patent rights to Zeiss lenses WITHIN THE US but not, by even the wildest stretch of legal authority, in Japan. There, the Japanese recognized all German patents properly registered in that nation and did so in every case save for those of the optical and mechanical rights of the German camera companies.
The end result was that the Japanese received a huge initial boost to their civilian camera production. Nikon did not produce civilian cameras before the War, and Canon barely did so. By 1950, both were in full and fiery production of a range of cameras based on thefted German patents.
And, then, the worst of all possible insults occurred. When the Korean War erupted, the US War Correspondents found out that they could obtain Japanese lenses for $10 which were close clones to the German originals, and these were all-but-unobtainable and cost several hundred dollars when they could be had at all. So, they cheerfully purchased Japanese lenses for their Contax and Leica cameras. To convince the editors that they were using quality optics, they fudged a test and claimed that the Japanese lenses were "better" than their German originals.
Now, this is absurd: a copy of excellence can be excellent, but it can never be better than the original. When word of this leaked back to the US, Popular Photography contacted the head of Carl Zeiss, U.S.A., Dr Karl Bauer (one of the developers of lens coatings, incidentally), and told him of the test. Popular Photography then asked him whether he believed the lenses were better than Zeiss lenses.
Unfortunately, Dr Bauer became angry and incoherent, a sign of his rational understanding that a copy cannot be better than an original. But Popular Photography reported this as Zeiss being unwilling to have their lenses tested together with the new Japanese lenses, and so the myth grew.
The Japanese lenses, of course, were sometimes as good as their German exemplars but, by definition, could be no better. The Canon and Nikon camera bodies had interesting design features though, interestingly, neither company fully understood the German originals, and both companies had problems with the lens mounts. Nikon even had finally to produce a special run of its lenses for Contax and another for the Nikon RF cameras, perhaps the most telling admission that they had fouled up the theft.
By the later 1950's, both West Germany and Japan had recovered their sovereign rights. When Yashica attempted to muck about with Franke & Heidecke's patent rights, the US Courts rapidly ruled in favour of the German company.
Marc James Small
msmall@roanoke.infi.net
FAX: +540/343-7315
Marc James Small and Charles M Barringer, THE ZEISS IKON COMPENDIUM Hove Collectors Books, 1995. ISBN 1-874707-24-3. Available from most fine camera stores on special order through Saunders/Silver Pixel Press. It is normally in stock at Tamarkin, KEH, Jimmy Koh's, and KEH.
Marc James Small, NON-LEITZ LEICA THREAD-MOUNT LENSES: A 39mm DIVERSITY. Hücklehoven, Germany: Rita Wittig, 1997. ISBN: 3-930359-47-2. Signed copies are available from the author for $45 postpaid in the US at: Marc James Small, Post Office Box 2901, Roanoke Virginia 24001-2901. Overseas postage is slightly higher.