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I’m not sure to say about it here (but for the now it’s place most focused on law in SE). Recently I found a guy on routinehub who said that all his app is copyrighted. He made app fully and only from existing files copyrighted by apple. Was this legal?
This guy is this one if something: https://routinehub.co/shortcut/9029/
documentation of MDM (which was tried to copyright) is here : https://developer.apple.com/business/documentation/MDM-Protocol-Reference.pdf
all his app is copyrighted
This statement is almost certainly true, in the sense that probably all the code is covered by copyright protection and that one or multiple persons or companies hold those copyrights.
As soon as you write something down and it meets a very simple test of creativity (there is more than one way to write it), then what you wrote is protected by copyrights and others may only make changes/additions to it with permission (a.k.a. a license).
He made app fully and only from existing files copyrighted by apple. Was this legal?
This is impossible to tell, because we don't know if and what permissions Apple gave for the use of the relevant files.
You posit that A writes code and publishes it, then B takes it, makes copyrightable modifications to it, and republishes the resulting work. You ask what the copyright position in this resulting work is, and whether such activity is lawful.
The result would indeed be copyrighted, as the Berne Convention requires, but the rights would vest in more than one entity. Both A and B now have a copyright interest in the resulting work.
Making a derivative work, as B has done in this case, is an activity normally controlled by copyright. Whether B's activity is lawful depends on the licence under which A made their work available. If A made it available under a permissive free licence (such as the three-clause BSD), then A has granted permission for such derivative works to be made and published. If A made it available under a copyleft free licence (such as GPLv3) then A has granted permission for derivative works to be made and published, subject to B observing certain conditions (including but not limited to publication of source, and relicensing under GPLv3) which B's failure to observe would invalidate, rendering B's activity a violation of A's copyright. If A didn't publish under a licence that permitted derivative works (such as most proprietary licences) then B is violating A's copyright.
We cannot tell from the information you have provided what Apple's licence on the original work was, so we cannot say which scenario applies here.
