Moreover, according to the plaintiffs, there is no room to address the connection between the defendants and Israel, but only to the actual execution of the invention (referred to the Civil Appeal Authority 3774/22 Taro Pharmaceutical Industries in the Tax Appeal v. Moshe Haight (October 25, 2022). In addition, the plaintiffs refer to support their claims for a determination in civil case 6573-10-20 Roy Pinchas Weissman v. Avi Kotlitsky (2/3/21) - which is similar to our case, since there as well as here - the plaintiffs are citizens and residents of Israel, the defendant is an Israeli citizen, the correspondence between the parties was done in Hebrew while the plaintiffs were in Israel and the Zoom call took place in Hebrew, the investment funds were transferred from Israel and were supposed to be returned to Israel. It was argued that in these circumstances, the parties' expectations were that the place of litigation in the dispute would be in Israel.
It was further argued - with regard to the defendants' argument regarding the effectiveness of the proceedings and that there would be a need to bring witnesses to Israel for the purpose of testifying - that in any event, according to the statement of counsel for the defendants in the hearing of July 2, 2024, the only witness on behalf of the defendants is defendant 1 - who is an Israeli citizen as aforesaid, whereas on the plaintiffs' side, on April 17, 2024, a list of witnesses was submitted that includes - apart from the plaintiffs themselves - Four other Israeli witnesses, one is an expert in the field of crypto, and three others are investors and employees (or former employees) in the defendants or any of them. In light of this, it was argued that the defendants' argument that witnesses with foreign nationality cannot be compelled to testify should also be rejected, since this is an argument that is irrelevant when all the witnesses in the proceeding are Israeli citizens.
In light of all of the above, the plaintiffs claim that the Israeli forum is the proper forum.