Lumenis has filed suite against Alma Lasers and her founder members, claiming $200,000,000 in damages for patent infringement.
Lumenis’ press release is to my found on their website, here:
http://www.aesthetic.lumenis.com/wt/page/pr/pr_1191257537
The founders, Ziv Karni, Yoav Avni, Nadav Beyer adn Evgeny Kordritzky apparently used to work for Lumenis, and Lumenis claims that the essential components of Alma Lasers Harmony system are rip offs of their technology.
A similar case is being filed against Alma Inc. in the US.
The companies deal with cosmetic surgery, particularly hair removal.
This is not the first time that engineers of one company have gone off and set up a competitor. As long as IP is not infringed, this is considered legitimate business practice by Israel’s courts, and labor judge Steve Adler consistently finds in favor of disgruntled ex-workers. Patents belong to the employers however, and such workers setting up in competition have to ensure that they do not infringe patents, even if they were the inventors thereof.
There have been a number of cases where charges of patent enfringement have been levelled against ex-employees. A current example being considered in the US is that of Applied Materials vs. Negevtech where Applied Materials bought up a couple of Israeli startups and several ex-senior staff went off and set up Nagev-tech which competes with Applied Materials in semiconductor inspection systems. In that case, the defendants are inventors of the patentees patents.
By suing in Israel, it is likely that the costs of trial will be a fraction of the costs in the US, which is a good reason for local companies not to ignore filing their patent applications in Israel, despite the small size of the local market.
