This also emerges from the court's hearing in the Merck case regarding the theft of trade secrets.  The Honorable Justice Procaccia noted that "it is important to distinguish between the patent acquisition proceeding, which grants the owner of the invention a proprietary right vis-à-vis Kul Alma, and the protection of a trade secret, which is given to the owner of a trade secret under the Commercial Torts Law, 5759-1999 [...].  These are two parallel tracks, each of which provides the owner of the invention with different protections; Each track has a 'price' to pay alongside it.  The patent process involves the disclosure of the details of the invention to the general public already at the initial stage of the processing of the patent application, at the end of which, if a patent is granted, the owner of the invention is granted a proprietary right in the entire world for a period of twenty years.  The disclosure of the details of the invention allows the public to make use of the details of the invention after the expiration of the patent, and in a conditional and limited manner even during the interim period between the receipt of the application and its publication and the decision of the Registrar in objections, subject to the possibility of claiming compensation for infringement of the rights of the invention owner" (ibid., at paragraph 35).

The protection of the trade secret therefore expires upon the publication of the secret, as part of the patent application.  But here his theft was done before it was published.  All of this leads to the conclusion that the matter of Merck does not apply in our case.

104. Moreover, Merck's case focuses on the owner of the trade secret who filed a patent application, and thus subjected himself to the balances that patent law observes in the interim period, between the period of filing the application and its approval.

­Our own matter is different.  It was established that Professor Seroussi had stolen a trade secret, and on the basis of which the patent application was filed.  In other words, the emphasis is not on the plaintiffs' patent, but on the theft and use made of it in the defendants' patent application.  Such a state of affairs was not up for discussion in the Merck case.  There was a case in which one party filed a patent application, and the other party sought to take advantage of the information in the application.  In our case, we are dealing with a situation in which both parties filed patent applications, and according to the claim, one of them relies on theft.  In these circumstances, it is doubtful whether a claim for monetary relief can be ruled out by virtue of the laws of enrichment and not by law or by virtue of some other normative source.  This matter will not be clarified in this framework when it deals with declaratory relief and an injunction.

105. I therefore reject the defendants' argument that the Merck case prevents the plaintiffs from petitioning for the remedies claimed in the present suit.

The defendants are not protected by virtue of the protections of the Commercial Torts Law

106. The defendants further claim that even if the circumstances of the case apply to the Commercial Torts Law, it grants them protection.  I will discuss the two defenses they are aiming for.

Knowledge acquired during work and turned into professional skills (section 7(a)(1) of the law)

107. Section 7 of the Law provides as follows:
108. Limitations to Liability

(a) A person shall not be liable for theft of a trade secret, if one of the following occurs: