Red Hat Fails to Protect Fedora Logo

The Tel-Aviv District Court (Judge Shoshana Almagor) rejected a Red Hat lawsuit filed to protect its “Fendora Hat logo” registered trademark {D.C. 3768-12-10 .Red Hat Inc. v. Start Commercial Ltd. et. al}. This ruling marks a first attempt by the world renowned Linux company to defend its trademark rights in an Israeli court. The Court found, inter alia, that Red ...

The new Israeli Copyright Law of 2007

On Monday, November 19, 2007, the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) enacted a new Copyright Law, which represents a complete transformation of Israeli intellectual property law. In May, 2008, within six months of the new law's publication in the official publication, the 96 year-old Copyright Law currently in force will be abolished. The current law, which has its roots in the English ...

The Registration Of Another's Trade Mark As A Domain Name - Prevention Of Access To Business

Section 3 of the Commercial Wrongs Law, 5759-1999 provides: "No person who carries on business shall unfairly prevent or impede access by customers, employees or agents to the business, property or service of another person who carries on business". A recent judgment of the District Court of Tel Aviv (per His Honour Judge Yehuda Zafet) has applied the section to ...

Monitoring employees email severely restricted

In a 91-page opinion the National Labour Court recently laid down a clear set of rules regarding an employer's right to monitor its employees' email messages and other employee uses of workplace IT systems.(1) The rules impose severe restrictions on employers' rights, subsequently calling for employers to consider modification and reform of their employee privacy policies.

Facts

The case ...

A While Elephant


The Computers Law, after an incubation period of twelve years, finally hatched -- as a white elephant. That was in 1995; commercial Internet had already made its debut in Israel, but Israeli legislation reflected an archaic vision of computers existing in splendid isolation. Astounding as it may seem, the legislators failed to grasp the most essential property of the computer, ...

Is An Internet Site A Newspaper?

According to the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court, the answer to the above question is yes. As regards the liability of a publisher pursuant to section 11 of the Defamation Law, 5725-1965, an Internet site is a newspaper, despite the fact that according to that section a newspaper means printed matter reproduced on a printing press (CC 145/00, Eliahu Weissman v. ...

Israel: a new national biometric database threatens privacy

A draft bill on biometric identification (Hebrew PDF) has recently been introduced by the Israeli Home Office. The Israeli government is looking to regulate the legal status of biometric national IDs, travel documents and passports, but its proposal goes one step further than legislation adopted in the more than 40 countries that have already introduced biometric passports, in ...

Global Business? Global Liability!

The Internet enables Israeli companies to carry on world-wide business. From computers in Israel they can offer their services to customers anywhere in the world. However, whilst entrepreneurs are captivated by the unlimited opportunities that the Internet is opening up to them, they tend to forget that world-wide business also has a legal price. An Israeli company's site that operates ...

More Articles