A researcher at the Technion and a number of others set up a business venture in virtual reality and augmented reality, in which the researcher and her daughter were to provide the technological basis, while the others were to provide the financial and administrative basis. The parties also agreed on salaries to be paid after an investment in the company and upon commencing work on full-time basis. When it became clear that the researcher brought to the company intellectual property proprietary to the Technion the other entrepreneurs reported to the Technion that began proceedings against the researcher and dismissed her. The project collapsed, but the researcher contended that she was entitled to a salary for her work and to compensation for the fact that the other entrepreneurs approached the Technion.
The Court rejected the claim. A partnership is a contract between several people to run a business for profit. The existence of a partnership negates employer-employee relationship between the partners. When a group of entrepreneurs agrees to set up a venture together, there are no employment relations between them but rather relationships of partnership and they can not demand the salary from each other. A defense against defamation will stand when the social interest in the fact that a person will give information to another is so strong that it is justified to deliver the data even though it is defamatory even if later it will be discovered that the things were not true. Here in fact the entrepreneurs were later found to have been telling the truth, which is also a defense against defamation, when it was found that indeed the material was illegally taken from the Technion. When the entrepreneurs discovered that the intellectual property belonged to the Technion, they were obligated to inform the Technion about it.
Published in Afik News 282 08.05.2019