In our case, the plaintiffs did not prove points of similarity that go beyond mere ideas
- Based on the principles we reviewed above, we will turn to examine whether copying was made by the defendants. Since we are dealing with academic articles on a professional subject that is not judicial knowledge, proving the similarities between the plaintiff's articles and the defendants' article must be done by means of expert opinions.
- The plaintiffs did not settle for a single opinion, but submitted four opinions, by the following experts: Dr. Michael Vaknin, an expert in the fields of quality management and information systems (hereinafter: the Vaknin Opinion); Dr. Daniel Bobrov, an expert in the field of quality and reliability (hereinafter: the Bobrov Opinion); Ms. Ahuva Wexner, translator and linguistic editor of academic literature; and Dr. Noa Tal Alon, an expert in the field of qualitative research.
The first three are long opinions spread over dozens of pages each, in addition to hundreds of pages of appendices (the opinions of Dr. Michael Vaknin, Dr. Daniel Bobrov and Ms. Ahuva Wexner). All three were attached as appendices the comparative analyses performed by the plaintiff herself over a period of about 200 pages, and each of these experts relates to the comparisons, inter alia, by means of tables.
- However, in the framework of the summaries, the plaintiffs made do - with the exception of a few examples from the opinions of Dr. Vaknin and Dr. Bobrov, to which I will refer in detail - to a comprehensive and sweeping reference to the opinion, while mentioning many pages of content (with each page to which they referred there is text or tables relating to a number of topics). This is done without any concrete details and without a detailed analysis of the main examples.
For example, in paragraph 25 of the plaintiffs' summaries, which begins with the words "Summary of the main violations based on expert opinions..." The plaintiffs wrote (in paragraph 25.1): "For the sake of example only, the experts note a proven lateral correspondence of findings and conclusions, ideas, content, key topics, models, illustrations and diagrams from a consistent, documented and validated research activity from the sources of Dr. Bashan and Prof. Nota, an innovative subject in the field of Global Quality Management, which has been researched for more than 15 years - which is appropriated - to the basis of the findings and conclusions of the infringing article (in this regard, see the opinion of Vaknin, Pp. 9, 10, 18, 19, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 40, 42, 43. Bobrov's opinion, pp. 11, 19, 20, 30, Gassner's opinion, pp. 8, 11, 33, 37, 42, 43.)".