First international conference on IP in Jewish law
The programme featured an impressive line-up of leading IP scholars, authorities on Jewish law and academics specialising in Hebraic law and Jewish history.
Yad HaRav Herzog is a non-profit organisation that publishes the Talmudic Encyclopedia and related texts.
A former president of Jerusalem’s Supreme Rabbinic Court, Rabbinic Judge Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, spoke about the possibility that conditioning a sale, as discussed in Talmudic literature, is equivalent to software licences. He provided a traditional Jewish equivalent to modern copyright.
In the plenum on comparative law, Dr Roman Cholij, a UK trademark attorney with doctorates from the Vatican and Oxford University, spoke about IP in Canon law and alluded to the story of the Irish Saint Columba (521-597 CE). When visiting his former teacher St Finnen of Clonard, he copied a beautifully illustrated psalter. Finnen asked that the copy Columba had made be returned to him, and when Columba refused, Finnen took his case to King Dermott.
Professor Amir Khourie of Tel Aviv University looked at intellectual property in Islamic countries in the context of Sharia law (Islamic religious law).
Rabbi Professor Gershon Bacon, a historian from Bar Ilan University, traced the roots of intellectual property back to The Bible, citing Jeremiah 23:30, in which the prophet curses false prophets who have plagiarised him. He went on to show that from the earliest times, rabbis were careful to acknowledge the authorship of ideas—essentially an acknowledgment of moral rights.
"RABBIS WERE CAREFUL TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE AUTHORSHIP OF IDEAS—ESSENTIALLY AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF MORAL RIGHTS."
Copyright per se became an issue with printing, and developed in Jewish law to protect publishers and to guarantee a return on their investments by providing a limited monopoly (typically 20 years) by a ban published at the front of the book that threatened copiers with ostracism. Professor Bacon presented an Italian example of this type of ban from 1620, nearly a century earlier than the Statute of Anne (1709).
Rabbi Professor Nachum Rakover, an Israel prize laureate who has published a book on copyright in Jewish law, developed this theme further, arguing that from its earliest days, the purpose of such bans was to encourage the creation and dissemination of knowledge by compensating publishers and authors, rather than to create private wealth.
Professor David Nimmer, a US copyright authority and Professor Neil Netanel, both from UCLA, lectured using material from their forthcoming book, Copyright in Jewish Law from Maimonides to Microsoft. They demonstrated that rabbinic decisions on copyright through the ages have been influenced by the corresponding secular law.
Although the programme was heavily focused on copyright, other types of IP were also discussed. Dr Michael Factor gave a brief overview of patents offering solutions to challenges in various areas of Jewish law, including ritual slaughter, the correct reading of the Five Books of Moses with the cantillation (ritual chanting), various devices for making modern technology compliant with the demands of Sabbath observance and high-density burial solutions for better usage of land.
He also discussed trademark controversies of Jewish interest and showed how the Rabbinic Court of the Orthodox Union in the US uses trademark law to prevent foods from being illicitly passed off as kosher and how the various parties in a Hassidic leadership inheritance struggle tried to use trademark applications filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office and the Israel Patent Office to strengthen their positions.
Rabbi Professor Steven Resnikoff of De Paul University discussed how Jewish law relates to various controversial areas of patenting such as the gene patent controversy in the US. He noted that the challengers to Myriad’s patents for breast cancer transmitting genes were represented pro bono by members of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School.
He also talked about stem cell research, which is controversial in Europe and the US, but in Jewish law is generally not considered an issue. In Jewish law, life is generally considered as starting with tissue formation some 40 days after conception as opposed to the Catholic belief that life begins with conception.
Professor Jeremy Phillips concluded the programme with a polished presentation discussing trade secrets in the Talmud.
The event attracted some 200 participants, including lawyers, patent attorneys, rabbis and academics.
