Israeli Monkey Business

February 14, 2010

 The authoress, Ms. Tamar Borenstein, created the well known (in Israel) character “Kofeeko”, a mischevous monkey who appears in children’s books.

Five months ago, “Almost Free Stores”, a supermarket chain started selling a breakfast cereal called Kofeefo, using a monkey with that name.

Ms. Borenstein claimed that the cereal was trading on her copyright and that the supermarket chain was guilty of Unjust Enrichment. The supermarket owners claimed to have purchased the character from Fotolya, a website selling images.

The main decision is pending, but Judge Yehuda Zeft, Deputy President of the Tel Aviv District Court decided that Under section 11 of the 2007 Copyright Act, the authoress had exclusive rights to do what she liked with her character and on balance, the supermarket chain would suffer little loss if they were given a month to use up supplies and has issued a temporary injunction against the supermarket chain.  One of the things that swayed him was that an employee of the supermarket chain apparently gave a receipt for Kofeeko instead of Kofeefo.

Comment

A monkey in Hebrew is Kof.

Kofeef is a pet name for a monkey rather like “doggie” as a pet name for a dig. It is a singularly generic name for a monkey character. Googling Kofeefo in Hebrew produces a wide range of pet monkeys from both the old and new world and miscellaneous marmosets, lemurs, etc.

Kelloggs used a monkey called Jose to sell Cocoa Krispies in the US when the cereal was introduced in 1958, and since 1986 when he replaced (fellow magician) Sooty, Coco the Monkey has been used for the UK branding of the cereal - Coco Pops.

Children’s books often have monkey characters. One of Noddy’s friends in Toy Town is Martha Monkey.

I am not sure that the character Kofeefo is more similar to Kofeeko than to other monkeys of the genre. Unlike the judge, I do not see the fact that the monkey is clothed as being particularly significant.  I think the names are similar, but the name Kofeefo is so similar to monkey that it is fairly generic.

I think the Right Honerable Judge Zeft is wrong in his understanding of Section 11 of the Copyright Law. The copyright in Kofeeko is infringed by copying a substantial portion of the creative work. The image here is not a substantial part of the book. The image of the monkey is not obviously identifiable with Kofeeko. The monkeys are different.

The correct grounds should be trademark infringement. Borenstein has a number of trademarks.   

We await the main trial with interest.

T.A. 8820-01-10 Borenstein Lezer  vs. A.R. Zim Direct Marketing LTD.

 

 

1 Comment | Copyright, Israel Copyright, Israel Court Ruling, Israel IP, famous marks, trademarks | Permalink
Posted by Michael Factor

Dr Stanley Davis, Senior Partner of the firm, passes away

January 26, 2010

 

אנו מודיעים בצער רב על פטירתו של השות הבכיר במשרדנו 

 ד”ר שמואל יוסף (סטנלי) דייויס

 אביו של השותף המנהל, ירמיה (ג’רמי) בן-דוד

השבעה תתקיים בבית משפחת דייויס, ברח’ אבן שמואל 59/3 רמות 2 ירושלים

 זמני תפילה שחרית כל יום: 6:45 וימי ב’ וה’ ב-6:40

מנחה – ב16:55, לימוד ולאחריו ערבית

לפי בקשת המשפחה, נא להימנע מביקורי תנחומים בין השעות 14:00 ל 16:00

________________________________________

With great sorrow we regret to inform you of the passing of

 Dr. Stanley J. Davis,

Senior Partner of the firm

 The shiva will take place at the Davis family home: 59/3 Even Shmuel St., Ramot 02, Jerusalem. (Tel.: 02-586 8261).

Times of prayers are as follows: Shacharit 6.45 (6.40 on Thursday and Monday)
Mincha 16.55 followed by limmud and Arvit
Mincha on Friday: 13:00 Mincha Gedola on Shabbat: 12:20

 The mourners will rise from the Shiva on Monday morning.

Please refrain from condolence calls between 14:00 – 16:00.

Our condolences are with his widow Joan Davis,
his son and Managing Partner of the firm, Yirmiyahu (Jeremy) Ben-David and with Hanoch (Kenny) Ben-David, Dr. Zev Davis, Rabbi Baruch Davis, Esti, Debbie, Nechama, Susie, the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the rest of the family.

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Posted by Michael Factor

Syria accedes to Madrid Protocol

January 23, 2010

The Syrian Arab Republic acceded to the Protocol of the Madrid Agreement concerning the International Registration of Marks on 21 December 2009.

The Madrid Protocol is now scheduled to enter into force in Syria on 21 March 2010. Source: WIPO treaty notification, 21 December 2009.

Comment

This raises three interesting issues:

  1. If our Northern neighbor can implement three months after acceding, why is Israel still having difficulties?
  2. Will Israeli companies be able to register their marks in Syria?
  3. Will third parties filing in Syria have to show compliance with the Anti-Israel Boycott?

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Posted by Michael Factor

The Strange Affair of Israel Patent Application Nos. XXX and YYY to ZZZ

January 8, 2010

Under the Israel Patent Law there is a provision whereby sensitive patent applications affecting national security and the like must be first filed by Israeli inventors in Israel, and the patent office refers such applications to the Minister of Defense who have six months to decide whether to ‘classify’ the application and issue a gag order, preventing the application from being filed abroad or otherwise published.  If the Ministry of Defense does not issue such an order, the application may be filed abroad.

 

Whilst many applications of possible military significance are forwarded to the Ministry of Defense, it is fairly rare for applications to actually be classified, and generally, after six months, the applicant can proceed with his invention.

 

Z had three such applications, all filed in 1981. The first was abandoned, however the other two were eventually were examined and allowed. The State of Israel never did not do anything with the inventions, and only some 12 years later, lifted the restrictions. Z himself did work to bring a product to market, even after the restrictions were lifted.

 

There is a committee that very occasionally convenes to rule on appropriate compensation. The committee, in its current constellation, rather different from that that first deliberated on this issue, has now issued a ruling and this article reports on the deliberations and ruling of the compensation committee regarding this claim.

 

Since there was no utilization by them, there is no patent royalty payable by the State. Z claimed 22 million dollars compensation for damage caused by the restriction order; the sum being an estimate of anticipated profits had the invention been commercialized.

 

According to the decision, after their allowance, the State of Israel requested re-examination of the patents. However, the patent office refused, pointing out that the Ministry of Defense could have conducted secret opposition proceedings, and presented a basis for their claim of invalidity.

 

The patents are therefore valid, but Z apparently did not produce adequate justification for the compensation claimed.

The committee offered to pay for an expert acceptable to Z to do a valuation, but Z didn’t take up this offer. However, when given another opportunity to base his claim for compensation, he provided details of direct expenses laid out, based mostly on 1700 hours work at his consultancy rate of $250 and requested compensation, regardless of culpability of the State. 

 

Z could only produced one receipt showing that in 2005 he could bill at $250 an hour for consulting. The State claimed that the expenses were inflated and not substantiated.  Z claimed that the very fact that a restriction order issued, was grounds for statutory compensation.

 

The case hinged on whether real damage had been done. Could the plaintiff prove his case? Should the fact that the State effectively prevented him from attempting to monetize his invention be taken into consideration when any damage was purely speculative, since there were no sales?

 

The committee appeared to be very uncomfortable with the case before them, but noted that Z was represented by a prominent and very experienced IP litigator and that the Israel system is adversarial and not inquisitional, so they could only rule on the basis of the claims made evidence submitted by the parties.

 

The committee ruled that the law could not be understood as indicative that any application that becomes ‘classified’ automatically deserves compensation as that would be an incentive for filing spurious military inventions. After rejecting that compensation was forthcoming under property rights, unjust enrichment and the like, the committee nevertheless decided that some sort of compensation was in order, and ruled that the wording of the law gave them the rights to rule on compensation based simply on the rule. They assumed that the 200 hours taken to develop the 3rd invention, after the second was conceived, was a reasonable assumption to decide that of the 1700 hours, 1300 were spent on the first, non-compensationable invention, and 200 on developing each of the 2nd and 3rd inventions – bearing in mind the time between the first and subsequent filings, this is not unreasonable.

 

Noting that consultancy fees of $250 or NIS 1000 an hour, obtainable 20 years later after much experience was not a fair basis for calculating how much Z’s time was worth at the time of filing, the committee dismissed this hourly rate as being fanciful.

 

For lack of any better tool, the committee used the most generous Central Govt. Statistics hourly rate of an employed researcher with a Ph.D. in a comparable field in 1981 - the time of the invention. The figure decided upon, and stressed as being the most generous figure they could find in any comparable job description was 6.7 NIS. The committee index-linked this sum, added interest and came up with the almost arbitrary figure of NIS 67,000 which is close to $20,000, or about 1000th of that claimed. 

In the circumstances, they ruled that awarding costs was inappropriate. 

 

Comment

 

Public security should certainly override personal enrichment, and the restriction order, which has its parallels in other patent systems, is therefore reasonable. However, presumably there was some value to the technology or the restriction order would not have issued.

 

The main problem with critiquing the decision is that there are too many unknowns. Was the invention valuable or worthless? Did the Ministry of Defense simply lose the file, or had they tried to implement the invention and only on failing to do so, decided it was worthless. There are, of course, a large numbers of patent applications that are filed that have dubious scientific basis. Many more are not commercially practicable.

 

That said, I am not convinced by the court’s assertion that pending patents cannot be considered property and that they only become property on issuance, and therefore preventing a patent for issuing does not mean that there is no tort under property laws. There are well established speculative markets for options, futures, bonds and the like. I do not think that a patent issuing creates property. Rather it assigns property created by invention to the inventor/applicant for a period of up to 20 years.

 

Whereas many patent applications do not result in commercial goods, there are inventions that have real commercial value and where the inventor is prevented from commercialization by the State, it is difficult for a committee to determine the worth of the invention.

 

Counsel for Z is an eminent IP litigator but is not a scientist. Neither are the committee members. Valuable inventions often appear to be light years away from commercialization at the time of conception, but some are eventually commercialized.

The invention may have required significant development and perhaps was not enabled. The application may, therefore, have been invalid on the grounds of lack of enablement. It’s difficult to tell without running experiments or examining the case. I don’t think the examiner or the committee could tell either.  In cases like this I am not sure whether the attorneys argue the law theoretically, or whether they have full access to the application as filed. I am not sure that it would necessary make a difference.

 

Did the Ministry of Defense attempt to develop the invention and subsequently determine that the concept was fundamentally flawed? Was the application overlooked for 10 years due to applicant negligence, compounded by his attorney, as may be inferred from the decision, or was there nowhere for the applicant to turn? Maybe, he worked on other inventions and this was side-tracked, but was, nevertheless, potentially valuable, and were the military to have encouraged him, could have had real value? The Ministry of Defense argues that even with the patent application restricted, the inventor could have manufactured and requested an export license. I think this may be true, but is irrelevant since without a patent portfolio, manufacturing would have rendered development and marketing pointless. 

 

A famous and significant case regarding restricted inventions was an invention by the actress Hedy Lamarr, the actress who starred in Ecstasy and went on to play Delilah in the Cecil B. de Mille epic.

 

Whilst married to Mandl, a prominent German arms dealer and Nazi sympathizer, and the first of six husbands, she overheard discussions on the problems of torpedo navigation and together with magician George Antheil who provided enablement based on the drum of a mechanical piano, filed a patent application for frequency hopping in 1941, that issued a year later as US 2,292,387, but was restricted for decades. It is now widely used in mobile telephony.

 

Incidentally, instead of using her inventive talent, the US Government decided that her contribution to the War Effort would be selling kisses for War Bonds.

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Posted by Michael Factor

Bar Ilan University Holds Premature “After Re Bilski” Conference

January 4, 2010

After receiving an Invitation to a conference titled “The Future of Subject Matter Eligibility After Re Bilski” held yesterday and today in Bar Ilan University with sponsorship from Stanford T Colb - Intellectual Prpoperty (sic) Law and from Fish Richardson, I surfed the net to find the eagerly awaited re Bilski decision from the Supreme Court that I’d apparently missed. Surprisingly I hadn’t. The decision is still pending.

As much to find out why a speaker list including 30 academics and practitioners were discussing the topics like the “implications of re Bilski for diagnostic method patents” and ”Bilski will cast a stronger shadow over business method patents than over software patents”, I tore myself away from my desk and went over to bar Ilan to participate.

I was surprised to learn that the eminent panelists had no more idea than I did as to what the Supreme Court would do, with one pointing out that the tea leaves hadn’t settled into a recognizable pattern.  Two leading US IP lecturers even stated that they preferred not to lecture about patentable subject matter as they weren’t really sure about it.

In general, the speakers gave polished presentations but had little worthwhile to say. In addition to the speakers themselves and a fair sprinkling of Colb employees, the audience included a handful of IP lecturers from the Law Colleges, some patent attorneys, examiners from the patent office, lawyers and IP managers from industry. From a networking perspective, the event was a good one.

None of the lecturers on the first day came up with new arguments for including software or business methods, or gene patents and diagnostic treatments, and I came away as bemused as I had arrived, as to why hold this event now, and not wait for the US Supreme Court to rule on subject matter eligibility and then to examine the ruling.  

I’ve been overtaken by events in the past. I announced a post USPTO reform conference with speakers flying in from the US and then Glaxo Smithkline got an injunction so the reforms never happened. We amended the program.  I imagine that Dr. Miriam Bitton who evidently put in a tremendous amount of work to organize this Bar Ilan Conference  must have been peeved with the Supreme Court’s sluggishness. Nevertheless, a change of program might have been appropriate.

I was unfortunately unable to attend the second day of this illustrious event due to other commitments. So have asked friend, Larry Rublin who was there to share his thoughts, so over to Larry:

Few, if any, of the speakers actually directly addressed Bilski, instead speaking on tangentially related topics of subject matter patentability. Really, when you think about it, it would have been hard to find 30 different academic viewpoints even if the Supreme Court had actually made a decision. Even so, I discerned two general opinions from the participants: the first opinion being that Bilski was a horrible test case that would likely affect the prosecution of business method applications, but would have little or no impact on software applications; and the second opinion being expressed by a shrug of the shoulders and a “I dunno” from those that obviously hadn’t really looked into the facts of the case.

The Commissioner’s talk was honest, enlightening, disappointing, disheartening and hopeful all at the same time. He started by reviewing the history of software patentability in Israel and addressed the unique difficulties of examining such applications. He then reviewed recent decisions by both the courts and the Patent Office without attempting to hide or explain away the glaring inconsistencies. He ended by reiterating the call for briefs on the subject and left the impression that something would change in the near future, but what that was no one was sure. 

“The Highlight of the day – in my opinion, anyway – was the talk by David Barkan that highlighted the ex post facto nature of court reversals and contrasted it with the way that Congress is constrained to grandfather pre-existing states when it changes the law. Bottom line, wouldn’t it be nice if Congress could/would step in and legislate clear definitions of subject matter eligibility instead having the courts effectively create new law in the guise of “interpretation” whenever they see fit to do so without regard to the practical ramifications for those who are constrained to practice under whatever the guidelines were in effect prior to the reversal?

Several out-of-the-box ideas were presented including Kevin Collins’ take on software patentability in terms of the Printed Matter Doctrine and Ted Sichelman’s suggestion that patents be divided into two categories (invention and commercial) in order to more equitably distribute the rewards from patents developed using federal funds vis-à-vis those developed by inventors risking their own money.

By far the most unusual suggestion came from Dr. Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid who spoke on “Rethinking Subject Matter Eligibility – A Social & Gender Perspective.” Her thesis – unless I totally missed what she was saying – was that since women generally underperform their male counterparts in Maths & Sciences, they therefore effectively suffer from discrimination when it comes to subject matter eligibility. Accordingly, patentable subject matter should be broadened to include areas where women are capable of competing (and benefiting) on a more equal basis, and suggested that patentable subject matter should be expanded in an affirmative action effort to include areas such as the social sciences where women are more likely to be represented.  My boss, who is one of several highly respected female patent attorneys, seemed to be somewhat annoyed by the presentation.  

The single most interesting factoid that I heard during the day was from Pam Samuelson who mentioned that a survey of 700 US startups revealed that only 30% had a patent portfolio of any kind, and that even among those that did, they generally assigned rather low priority to generating patents. The 30% figure, as she confirmed to me privately during a break, is relatively constant across the startup life cycle, i.e. there is apparently no progression towards a patent-centric policy as a startup ages, nor does it appear that having a portfolio significantly impacts on the likelihood that a startup will survive. This is a factoid that I will not be sharing with our clients. In any case, despite the fact that little of practical nature was discussed – and it was, after all, an academic event – a good day was had by just about all who attended.

 Both Larry and I note that the refreshments served to the public were of a high standard. Indeed, I think the Bar Ilan rogeluch were better than those served at the event that my firm, JMB, Factor & Co., hosted last month on the boundaries of patentability. See http://blog.ipfactor.co.il/2009/12/03/the-boundaries-of-patentability/

As to what will happen in the re Bilski case, the Amerikat seems to think that because of the subject matter of the Bilski claims, the ruling probably won’t change much. See  http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2010/01/letter-from-amerikat-2009-countdown_01.html

Personally, I’d like to see business methods out, software in, stem cell research in (from a Hallachic perspective, with the notable exception of J. David Bleich, most authorities concur is not a problem), gene patents in. I think the US cannot go back on TRIPS obligations and start defining non-patentable subject matter. I also believe that most  patentability issues can be resolved by utility, novelty and obviousness considerations.

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Posted by Michael Factor

Federated Institute for Patent and Trademark Registry is a Scam

December 23, 2009

We regret to inform readers that there is yet another SCAM service offering registration of IP rights.  This new one, the Federated Institute for Patent and Trademark Registry (FIPTR) has actually had an injunction served against them by the Florida Attorney General. See:  http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2009/article_0062.html

We are providing this information as a service for clients and readers.

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Posted by Michael Factor

Israel Patent Office Publishes Decision on Design for Kerb-Stone

December 14, 2009

 

In a  cancellation proceeding regarding Design Number 39519 to Ackershtein Ltd, Wolfman Industries Ltd. have managed to cancel a design for a kerb-stone.

The Law (Section 36 of the Patent and Design Ordinance) allows third parties to initiate design cancellation proceedings where a design was published in Israel prior to registration.

The case is interesting as grounds for the cancellation concerned what constitutes publication, both in terms of where and to whom, and in terms of whether a previously published single view of a three-dimensional object, which is rather less than generally required to register a design, is sufficient to cancel a registration by rendering it lacking in novelty.

The applicant apparently discussed the design at a closed meeting where a representative of Wolfman was present on 14 April 2004, which was prior to filing the application on 25 July 2004. Additionally, on the following day to that meeting, Yoval Winter, an employee of Wolfman, found the design on a website belonging to Brett Group and Profilebiton, where apparently the design was viewable from 2001 onwards.

The Arbitrator of Intellectual Property and Assistant Commissioner, Noah Shalev Shmulovits ruled that both the meeting and the internet publication constituted publication under Israel Law.

Furthermore, the fact that the bottom and back surfaces of the design were not published is immaterial, since the side that matters, i.e. that facing the road and viewable to the public when the kerb stone is in place, was published.

The assistant-commissioner ruled that the design registration was voided and further awarded 30,000 NIS costs to Wolfman.

One criticism I have is that the two Internet publications appear to be from abroad. One from Brett, a UK company, and the other from Profilbeton, apparently a German company. In a quirk of the Law, dating back to the mandate and never updated, designs in Israel require local novelty only. In circular M.N. 69, from December 2008, the commissioner of patents, Dr. Noam, extended this to include that published on the Internet and available from Israel. See http://blog.ipfactor.co.il/2008/12/28/new-israel-design-regulations/. At the time of the infringement, I would argue that the Law, though hopelessly out of date, required local novelty. Thus, I am not sure that the Internet publication can fairly be considered a publication.

That said, I agree that the meeting was sufficient to be considered a publication under the Law. Note - Profilbiton may be an Israeli company. I couldn’t find them on the Internet, although the Assistant Commissioner claims to have with no problem.

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Posted by Michael Factor

Jordan raises trademark registration fees 600%

December 7, 2009

According to Jordan Ministerial Decree No. 128, which published on 1 December 2009 in the Official Gazette and became effective as of that time, there has been a dramatic increase of 600% or more in official trademark registration fees.

The increase is .

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Posted by Michael Factor

Jerusalem Artist Awarded Statutory Copyright and Moral Damages for Pictures Displayed on Internet Site with Signature of Another Artist

December 3, 2009

Molly Cohen, an artist living in Jerusalem’s trendy Nachlaot area, discovered that a Solomon Suissa who she had contracted to sell her paintings, had deleted her name and inserted his own, before trying to sell prints thereof via Yair Medina’s website, Jerusalem Artistic Prints LTD. Cohen sued Suissa, Medina and the company. Suissa’s version of the events weren’t heard, as he didn’t defend herself.

Ms. Cohen was unable to prove any damages, since it was not clear that any prints were sold. Nevertheless, the judge awarded statutory copyright and moral right damages to Ms. Cohen for the display of the goods on the website, ruling that the display was one infringement, noting that the hosting company, Jerusalem Fine Art Prints LTD., had taken the pictures down immediately that the alleged fraud was brought to his attention.

The judge ruled 20,000 NIS damages (the maximum allowable under the 1911 Copyright Law in force at the time of the infringement) and a further 18000 NIS legal costs, which is not bad considering that the plaintiff was not represented.  The judge ruled that the posting of all Cohen’s paintings attributed to Suissa should be considered as one infringement of her moral rights. As they were displayed only for a short period of time however, and none sold, there was no financial losses. 

The website is to be found at http://www.jerusalem-arts.com

The case is a strange one in that there is a lot of conjecture as to whether the gallery had grounds to suspect that the paintings were not by Suissa. Indeed, the whole case reeks of unproved suspicions.

Notably, Ms. Cohen represented herself. With a market price of $300 per painting and none sold, it seems that Ms Cohen is more successful at representing herself in court than as an artist.

There are some interesting aspects of the case however. 

Firstly, it is not clear from the ruling how the fine is to be divided between the defendants.

Under the Copyright Ordinance of 1024, Section 4A, Ms Cohen clearly has moral rights that are infringed if a painting that she has made has her name replaced by someone else. However, under Section  6(3)a of the 1911 Copyright Act that is the relevant Law for infringement prior to the 2007 Copyright Law coming into effect, “if a name purporting to be that of the author for the work is printed or otherwise indicated thereon in the usual manner, the person whose name is so printed or indicated shall, unless contrary is proved, be presumed to be the author of the work.”

Where an artist brings a series of paintings to a gallery for sale on commission, and the paintings bear his name, the owner of the gallery can reasonably assume that the paintings are those of the signed artist unless proven otherwise. The judge in this case has placed a huge burden on gallery owners to be check that artists bringing in work are the true artists. Posting photos of pictures to be sold, on a website that sells pictures does seem to be fair use.

The ruling, by District Judge Yoef Shapira, claims that the fact that the Internet gallery owner immediately took down the pictures when Ms Cohen contacted him is indicative that he was suspicious. I find this hard to accept. I can see a reasonable person taking down pictures from his website when such an issue is raised, pending investigation. Furthermore, since the subject matter was Christian, and the alleged artist, Suissa, was apparently a religious Jew, Judge Shapira ruled that Medina should have been suspicious. But if Medina was convinced that Suissa was religious, he would presumably not suspect that he was passing off someone elses pictures as his own.

I am thus not convinced that there is a reasonable case against Yair Medina, the gallery owner.

The case: 9080/07 molly Cohen vs. Suissa, Medina and Jerusalem Artistic Prints LTD.

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Posted by Michael Factor

Israel Court Rejects Fair Use Claims of Newspaper in Reviewing Internet Content

November 22, 2009

Newspapers and news agencies such as Reuters and the Associated Press are quick to inform readers that rewriting their content is copyright infringement, despite the fact that it isn’t.
Nevertheless, newspapers are hard hit by news aggregation services such as google news and find it difficult to make ends meet in the Internet age.

In an interesting about-turn, an Israeli photo-journalist, Tess Scheflan, has successfully sued Israel’s most popular daily newspaper and associated website for (i) copyright infringement by using a photograph she took without her permission, and (ii) infringement of her moral rights by not accrediting the source.

The picture was of a helicopter and Israeli soldier at the helipad of the Tel HaShomer Hospital and was taken during the Second Lebanon War. the journalist in question, Tess Scheflan, had published the photograph on a website where photographers post pictures for feedback and criticism. The posting was accompanied by her name and the (c) copyright symbol. Yedioth Achronot, Israel’s most popular newspaper, and the associated website YNET posted the picture after removing the copyright notice and name of the photographer. the posting was in a column about web-vibes.

Scheflan sued the paper and the website for 70,000 NIS (about $20,000). The Tel Aviv District Court rejected the fair use newspaper review defence, and in lieu of proven damages, awarded minimum statutory damages of 10,000 NIS for each offence, viewing the printed paper and the website as separate publications. Since the paper had intentionally removed her name, the court also awarded damages of 4000 NIS separately for each of the two publications, noting that the paper had apologized and posted a credit after the photographer had brought the issue to their attention.

The case was tried under the Copyright Ordinance 1911, since the new copyright law was not in effect in 2006 when the infringement took place. The court considered the publication non-commercial which I find surprising since the paper accepts advertising and uses content to draw readers to give exposure to the advertisements.

Anyway, Ms Scheflan’s blog is here: http://tessscheflan.blogspot.com You are welcome to view her images there.

The case: T.A. 58032/07 Tess Scheflan vs. Yediot Internet and Yediot Achronot LTD. 13 November 2009

Leave a Comment » | Copyright, Intellectual Property, Internet, Israel, Israel Copyright, Israel Court Ruling, Israel IP, Israel Related, News, Opinion, infringement | Permalink
Posted by Michael Factor

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