Therefore, it was found that the defendant published chapters of the book during 2016 (i.e., less than seven years before the filing of the lawsuit), and continues to publish the same chapters that he wrote from the book even shortly after the lawsuit was filed. Therefore, there is no room to accept the claim of limitation.
The claims for the dismissal of the claim due to an act of the court and the statute of limitations are rejected.
- The clarification of the disputes will therefore be done as follows:
First, the factual dispute regarding the possibility of identifying the plaintiff as the character of the "villain" in the book will be examined.
Second, the plaintiff's claim of wrongs committed against him - invasion of privacy and defamation - will be examined.
Third, the possibility of the existence of defense arguments will be examined.
and fourth, the plaintiff's claim for the damage caused to him as a result of the publication and for the remedies to which he petitioned will be examined.
Obviously, each chapter in the decision is contingent on the outcome of the clarification of the chapter that preceded it, for if it is found that there is no room to identify the plaintiff as a character in the book, there is no point in clarifying the claims of wrongdoing, and if there are no wrongdoings, there is also no point in clarifying the claims of damage caused.
- Identification of the plaintiff as a character in the book
- The first dispute that must be decided is, in fact, the one at the core of the claim. The dispute regarding the possibility of identifying the plaintiff as a character in the book, the one referred to in this judgment as "the villain".
- According to the plaintiff, this character is described in the book and in the defendant's various publications as an Israeli who teaches intelligence at the University of Sofia, as an investor in real estate in the city of Varna in Bulgaria, and as someone who specializes in Internet intelligence. The villain is even told that he underwent gastric bypass surgery and that he suffers from diabetes. The details of these descriptions of the villain, the plaintiff claims, do not fit any person in Europe other than the plaintiff, and hence, the plaintiff claims, many identify the plaintiff with the villain's character. According to the plaintiff, of course, this is not a coincidence but rather a deliberate intention on the part of the defendant to harm him. An intention about which can be learned from the defendant's own publications. From interviews he gave and from links he deliberately created between the plaintiff's name and derogatory words.
- The defendant denies this claim outright.
According to the defendant, the book he began writing presents a completely fictional story, which has no connection between it and the plaintiff. So is the imaginary plot, so are the various characters described in the book, and so is the character who is the subject of the lawsuit - "the villain". Many people in the world, the defendant claims, are overweight and suffer from a variety of diseases such as diabetes, so there is no possibility of identifying the villain with the plaintiff. According to the defendant, the plaintiff's claim that he is "the only person in Europe" who fits the description of the villain in the book is baseless and baseless.