''Qimron v. Shanks'' (2000) is a landmark ruling by the
Israeli Supreme Court
The Supreme Court (, ''Beit HaMishpat HaElyon''; ar, المحكمة العليا) is the Supreme court, highest court in Israel. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all other courts, and in some cases original jurisdiction.
The Supreme C ...
. The court ruled that an Israeli scholar had a copyright on his reconstruction of an important
Dead Sea Scroll
The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the nort ...
and that his right had been violated by an unauthorized early publication of his work.
Background
The more than 800 scrolls, including the oldest known copies of
Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
books, are thought to have been written between the 2nd century B.C. and A.D. 70 and were discovered in 1947 near the
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea ( he, יַם הַמֶּלַח, ''Yam hamMelaḥ''; ar, اَلْبَحْرُ الْمَيْتُ, ''Āl-Baḥrū l-Maytū''), also known by other names, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank ...
in caves at
Qumran
Qumran ( he, קומראן; ar, خربة قمران ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli ...
on the
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
.
Thereafter they were held at a museum in
East Jerusalem
East Jerusalem (, ; , ) is the sector of Jerusalem that was held by Jordan during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, as opposed to the western sector of the city, West Jerusalem, which was held by Israel.
Jerusalem was envisaged as a separat ...
.
[{{Cite book, last=MacQueen, first=Hector L., editor2-first=Timothy H, editor2-last=Lim, editor1-first=John J, editor1-last=Collins, date=2010-10-28, chapter=The Scrolls and the Legal Definition of Authorship, url=http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199207237.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199207237-e-31, language=en, doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199207237.001.0001, isbn=9780199207237, title=The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls] In 1967, the museum came under Israeli control following the
Six‐Day War between
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
,
Jordan
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
and
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
.
While this brought the work on the scrolls under the auspices of the
Israeli Antiquities Authority
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA, he, רשות העתיקות ; ar, داﺌرة الآثار, before 1990, the Israel Department of Antiquities) is an independent Israeli governmental authority responsible for enforcing the 1978 Law of ...
, this did not otherwise affect the work of an international team of scholars who had been appointed in 1953/54 to transcribe, edit, and publish the fragments found in Cave 4 at Qumran. It did, however, lead to resentment from scholars outside the team who were denied any access to the unpublished scrolls.
Ruling
It was the first in which
copyright law
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
had been applied in court to a reconstruction of an ancient document.
References
Copyright case law
2000 in Israel