The publishing house Ketubim (Scriptures) has sued Yeshivat Ohr v’Yeshuah (Light & Salvation Talmudic Academy) for allegedly plagiarizing their one volume edition of Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, (Maimonides’ Code of Jewish Law – a medieval classic, that was the first comprehensive, fully categorized codex of Halacha.
Both single volume books include the 14 volume code without commentary. The plaintiffs claim that their various indexes and keys were copied.
Clearly, the terms and concepts chosen for indexing will reflect a degree of judgement, but two indexes of the same work for the same market, will be somewhat similar. The court has refused to grant an injunction but has ruled that defendant keep records of sales.
Indexes and keys are the accumulation of many hours of painstaking work amd the law needs to prevent such work being stolen. However, indexes tend to lack the creativity of classical artistic creations such as literary works.
It is not the first time that indexes have been tried in the Irael court. Lev Itzhaka guide for second hard car prices in Israel successfully sued a daily newspaper for publishing a car-price supplement that used their statistics and research.
We note that it is unfortunate that this issue wasn’t settled in the Rabbinic courts, since Jewish Law on copying printed matter goes back to the dawn of printing.
