AppCam Claims Leica Stole Its Software for the Leica T, Slams Them via Press Release
About a month ago, Leica debuted the touch-friendly, aluminum unibody Leica T: a hand-polished beauty that, despite the standard (read: REALLY!?) Leica price tag has been received pretty positively. Well, by some people at least.
There is one company that was less-than-thrilled when they saw the Leica T, however, and that company’s name is AppCam. According to AppCam, the operating system on the Leica T is almost identical to the AppCam OS… the same OS that they tried to shop out to Leica two and a half years ago.
AppCam drew the same conclusion that you probably drew when you read that last sentence: the chances that this is mere coincidence are slim. But since AppCam is a tiny little company and Leica is… well… Leica, there’s not much they can do about it. They can’t really go after Leica in a court of law, and so, instead, they’ve decided to go after them in the far less forgiving court known as the press.
In a press release that can be described as snarky, tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic and scathing, they… shall we say… let the world know about this anomaly and wished Leica “lots of success” in the same way you and I would say “bless you” to someone who just sneezed directly on us. From the press release, as reprinted by Photography Bay:
As we now inquired at Leica about the circumstances of this incredible accident, they taught us a very hard lesson quickly. The legal department of Leica told us very clearly that there must have been a kind of “parallel development” of our two companies, and that each publicly expressed doubt from AppCam about that will result in massive legal action and substantial claim for compensation by Leica.
Because such a hard crackdown would probably ruin our small company, we would like to announce at this point this two following immutable truths:
- The emergence of the operating system of the Leica T has nothing to do with our former presentation of the AppCam system. All similarities are completely coincidental.
- Elvis is still alive, somewhere out there …
You can read the full release over on Photography Bay, but it is a lesson in sarcasm and, if we may, poking a bear with a sharp stick. We’re not entirely sure whether or not Leica actually stole the design, although we can certainly see how AppCam arrived at that conclusion. What we are substantially more sure of is that Leica won’t take kindly to AppCam’s press release.
We’ve included a press image of the Leica system and a video example of AppCam’s OS above, so you can judge for yourself. Take a look and let us know what you think in the comments down below.
