Israeli software company Torah Soft is suing giant publishing firm Simon & Schuster and writer Michael Drosnin for copyright violations. The suit, filed last night in New York, is one of the largest claims ever filed by an Israeli company in the US.
In 1997 Simon and Schuster published the book "The Bible Code", written in English by Michael Drosnin. The book became a world bestseller; an estimated 20 million copies have been sold for hundreds of millions of dollars.
According to Torah Soft, the book owes its success to its being the first publication of large sections of the "Bible Code" enterprise - a software program developed by the company for discovering and presenting codes in the Bible in Hebrew. The suit filed claims Drosnin's book includes 97 sections of the software and of Torah Soft's database protected by copyright, for which Drosnin and Simon & Schuster had no permission to publish.
Torah Soft general manager Rabbi Dr. Yochanan Spielberg said that Drosnin's book would not have become a bestseller if it had not copied extensively from the company's software. "We believe that anyone with a basic understanding of personal honesty and business ethics will agree that we are entitled to credit and payment for the use of our pioneering work", he said.
This is the second claim filed by Torah Soft against Drosnin and Simon & Schuster. The first suit, for $18 million, was filed in 1998, after Drosnin and the publisher did not give Torah Soft credit in the book. This claim is still being adjudicated in New York
Published by Israel's Business Arena on August 1, 2000