In any event, the defendant denies any claim that tries to attribute to him the execution of any deliberate action on the Internet in general and the Google search engine in particular, which is capable of linking the plaintiff to the "villain".
- The key to deciding this dispute does not lie in the plaintiff's subjective feeling, just as it does not lie in the defendant's intention.
The test that will determine the possibility of identifying the plaintiff as the same character in the book, "The Villain," will be based on objective criteria. about the details of the information and characteristics of that character in the defendant's various publications - in the chapters of the book that were published, in the interviews given by the defendant and in other publications on his behalf.
And to be precise. The reading of those publications by the "reasonable reader" does not allow any identification of the plaintiff as having a connection to the character in the book. To the same villain or another. Not as someone on whom the character is based and not as someone whose personality inspired the character.
After all, the plaintiff's name is not mentioned in the publications (except for a casual mention as an acquaintance of the defendant, the meaning of which I will discuss later). Anyone who does not know the plaintiff cannot associate him with even a hint of the characters in the book. Had the examination been conducted on the basis of a "reasonable reader", it would have been possible to reject the plaintiff's claims at this stage, but this is not the test.
The examination of the possibility of identifying a fictional character with a character in the real world is not done by applying the "reasonable reader" test, but rather by applying the "reasonable acquaintance" test. Thus, for example, the "identification requirement" was interpreted for the purpose of clarifying a claim that publication constitutes defamation:
The identification requirement is a material requirement and not a technical one. The question is not whether a person's name was explicitly mentioned in the published statements. As stipulated in section 3 of the Law, the identification requirement will be fulfilled in those cases in which published things are attributed to an individual who claims harm implicitly from the publication or as a result of external circumstances or a combination of the publication and external circumstances... Thus, for example, in cases where a person's name is not mentioned in the published material, but details are mentioned or presented that lead to his identification by his immediate surroundings or even by a broader environment, the publisher (or others responsible for the publication) may be found liable for defamation, provided that the data is the ordinary knowledge of those who heard or read the statements. (Civil Appeal 8345/08 Ofer Ben Natan v. Muhammad Bakri, IsrSC 65(1) 567, paragraph 34 of the judgment of Justice Yoram Danziger)