Defendant 3 (hereinafter also: Prof. Shoval) has served as the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Ariel University since 2017. Prior to that, he served for about 5 years as the head of the Robotics and Computerized Representation Systems Laboratory at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion, and later served for 12 years as head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at Ariel University. Prof. Shoval has more than 150 scientific publications, he has mentored many graduate students, including serving as a supervisor for 10 doctoral students. In addition, he serves as a consultant to international corporations and security bodies.
The defendants' article and the list of claims regarding the infringement
- On September 13, 2021 (about 8 months after the date of submission of Ms. Agmon's research proposal and about 3 months after the presentation of the pilot study), the defendants published an article on the basis of the said study, entitled: "A Global Quality Management System Model (G-QMS) in System of Systems (SOS) - Aspects of Definition, Structure and Model". The article was first published on the platform for publishing articles (Preprint) and was later submitted for publication in the journal SYSTEMS.
- According to the plaintiffs, the subject of the article in question, which we will refer to for convenience as "the defendants' article", is identical to the subject of the plaintiff's research paper, and it appropriates for itself "motifs and research findings collected over the years" by her, and presents them as if they were the defendants' findings. All this, without the plaintiffs' permission and without giving the plaintiff credit, and in an attempt to disguise the copying by means of changes in terms and concepts. In doing so, the article violates the plaintiffs' copyright and the plaintiff's moral right.
- According to the plaintiffs, the core of the violation (as defined in paragraph 25.3 of its summaries) is the taking and appropriation of the findings and conclusions of two articles by the plaintiff that have not yet been published by the plaintiff, which were in the editing stage after their approval in principle for publication in academic journals, and which were forwarded to Dr. Cordova prior to the publication of the defendants' article:
- "Mapping Key Variables (Themes) in Global Quality Management: Developing Theory and Building an Initial Body of Knowledge" (Article No. 8 of the plaintiff's list of sources P/13, which was referred to by the experts on her behalf. The article was attached in Appendix 19 to the plaintiff's affidavit and will be referred to hereinafter: "Article 8").
Article 8 was forwarded to Dr. Cordova on August 25, 2021 (about 3 weeks before the publication of the defendants' article, on September 13, 2021).