Fight for SU8

So for those who like to see how the things evolved, here is a lighthearted story of your servitor involvment in why may remain in history as the 'Fight on SU8'! Oh, well, here is what you get for trying to help your human brother and for free advertisement: promiss of being sued :-)

The story started by an email from L. Guerin the former founder of Sotec Microsystem, a now defunct company that was spin-off from the group in Lausanne who pionnered the SU8 work

[08/04/2004]
Dear Sir,
 
My name is Louis Guerin and I worked with SOTEC Microsystems. I had now a look at your page about 
SU8 and I have some comments:
 
a. You say that there is now a company in Israel called Gerstel. I just want to tell you that 
this company does not have the right to sell a certain number of products as it does. In fact 
many of those products are covered by patents that belong only to me and judelewicz from gerstel 
has NO license for them. I even doubt that he has a license from IBM to sell pure SU8 (Judelewicz 
probably thinks he can use the license IBM gave to SOTEC Microsystems, but that's something he 
does not have this right). I must also say that Judelewicz, who worked at Sotec Microsystems, is 
sued today for his actions at SOTEC Microsystems. He is the main responsible for the death of 
that company (it was he who decided on his own that SOTEC MCICROSYSTEM has to stop all 
activities) and it now the job of the justice to fix this matter. So I think that, as long as 
this procedure is running, Gerstel should not be listed as a producer of SU8. I am now suing 
Judelewicz for his dishonesties and bad actions, and I will not hesitate to sue all person who 
will buy and use products from Gerstels that are protected by my patents (remover, SU8 with 
filler)...
 
b. I have now created another homepage about SU8 where I have put the technical informations that 
were on the page of SOTEC MICROSYSTEMS. The address of that page is www.geocities.com/su8home or 
www.geocities.com/guerinlj.
 
Best regards
 
Dr Louis J. Guerin

[03/05/2004]
Dear Sirs,
In relation to the information on your site: 

warning text in red frame: 
(quote) WARNING: Gerstel SA the other company supposedly selling SU8 is sued by Dr J. L. Guerin 
(former member SOTEC). According to Dr J. L. Guerin they may not even be legally able to 
sell SU8. Moreover Dr J. L. Guerin apparently still hold all the right on the derived 
product (SU8 with filler and remover) and they can not be sold by other parties. We hope that 
these problems will be solved in the near future for the benefit of all the SU8 users, but as we 
are not in the position to decide who is right or wrong while we are waiting for the justice to 
decide we'll leave the contact to Gerstel SA.

Please let me clarify as follows:

Gerstel SA has sigend a licence agreement with IBM, Contract N° W0129610, sigend by Gerald 
Rosenthal from IBM dated 17.1.03, for the production and marketing of SU8.

Therefore the information you included is the site is not true, diffamatory and hurts the good 
name of Gerstel SA.

Mr Louis Guerin is allowed to have his opinions on any matter, however you have commited a crimal 
offense by placing untrue and diffamatory information on a public site.

In light of this I ask you to do two things: 

1)       withdraw immediately the diffamatory text from the public site

2)       in the same space (i.e. red frame in which today you have placed the warning) insert an 
apologetic explanation, that the information contained in the Warning were not true and 
diffamatory to the good name of Gerstel SA, which has all legal rights necessary to manufacture 
and marketing SU8. 

3)       Withdraw from the site any other diffamatory information on Gerstel SA.

Please be informed that public diffusion of information that are false and directed to hurt a 
good name of an individual or an enterprise is a criminal offence and subject to the relevant 
legal regulations.

In case you do not update the site with an immediate effect, the legal action will be taken 
against you, with the request to close the site as well as financial compenstation for the damage 
commited.

With respect, 

Judelewicz,
Gerstel Ltd.
 Judelewicz
General Manager
 Ben -Zion 19, 54286 Israel
Switzerland/Israel/Taiwan 
Fax:      +97 23 620 29 13
E-mail:Gerstel2@bezeqint.net
E-mail: info@gersteltec.ch
Web: www.gersteltec.ch

Accordingly we immediately changed the banner, of course (but not because the new threat to be sued :-), and expressed our embarassment of having hurt someone here by leaving a red banner with free advertisement (note, anyway, that there is legally no diffamation by the website : all the comments are referred to their original author - we are only poor journalists here...)

But the story does not end here, and here is what we received :

[18/05/04]
Dear Sir, 

Re:	Gerstel SA and Dr. Moshe Judelewicz

We are writing to you, on behalf of our clients - Gerstel SA and Dr. Moshe Judelewicz - regarding 
the http://aveclafaux.freeservers.com website.  We have been instructed to approach you on the 
understanding that you are the person who writes on the site.  In the event that this is not the 
case, please refer us to the correct individual.

It is our clients' view that you are under an obligation to check the information that you make 
public before you publish names and products on your website.  

We are advised that you have previously issued a warning on the said website, which - as our 
clients pointed out in their letter of May 3, 2004 - was not only materially harmful to Gerstel 
SA Dr. Moshe Judelewicz, but contained incorrect, untrue and defamatory information.  In response 
thereto, we are advised that you have issued the following warning on the said website: 

"SU-8: A THICK PHOTO-RESIST FOR MEMS
WARNING: Gerstel SA is also selling SU8 (at least with EPFL) - sorry for the previous misleading 
remark. We have been unfortunately caught in the fight between Dr Judelewicz (Gerstel SA) and Dr 
J. L. Guerin on issue related to their former partnership in SOTEC Microsystem, but that is the 
tribute to the usefulness of this website :-) Dr Guerin apparently still hold all the right on 
the derived product (SU8 with filler and remover) which he says can not be sold by other parties. 
Anyway, we hope that these problems will be solved in the near future for the benefit of all SU8 
users... 
(created 01/99 - modified 03/05/04)" 

Unfortunately and much to our clients' surprise, this warning simply does not correct your 
previous harmful and defamatory statement regarding Gerstel SA.  It still states that Gerstel did 
not have the right to sell SU8.  Sadly you did not take the opportunity of checking the contents 
of either the original or the amended warning with Gerstel - either directly or via the 
information available to the public on the Gerstel website (www.gersteltech.ch).  As a result of 
this, not only Gerstel SA but also Dr. Judelewicz, have suffered and continue to suffer 
substantial harm to their business, good name and reputation.

Our clients have requested us to demand that you will forthwith and without delay publish a clear 
and unambiguous correction warning on the website correcting the previous two warnings and 
stating the following:

1.	Gerstel SA has the right (i.e. the licence from the patent owner) to sell the product; and

2.	Indicating that the information provided by you previously was incorrect and apologizing 
for causing harm to the good name and reputation of Gerstel and Dr. Judelewicz and for misleading 
the readers of the site; and

3.	Including the correct details for Gerstel as follows:  Gerstel SA 19 Ben-Zion, 54286 
Tel-Aviv, Israel,  Tel: +41 79 564 34 23, Fax: +97 23 620 29 13, under the name GM1040, GM1060, 
GM1070, GLM2060 SU8/Nanocomposites and others MEMS, MOMES and LIGA  products  (corresponding to 
IBM license). 

In the event that you do not forthwith proceed to make the requisite corrections and statements 
as indicated above, our clients shall be faced with no alternative but to resort to legal 
proceedings for all remedies and compensation available to us.

Nothing in this letter shall, or shall be deemed to be, any derogation of or prejudice to, the 
rights and remedies of Gerstel SA and/or Dr. Judelewicz.

    Yours sincerely,

   Helen Raziel, Adv.
Naschitz Brandes & Co

Cc:	Adv. Eran Ballan - Naschitz Brandes & Co, Law Firm
	Gerstel SA - Dr. Moshe Judelewicz
	Mr. Eli Ekaim, Adv., Switzerland

Well, that's it. Real lawyers.
Thus it seems our correction did not satisfy Gerstel SA, and because we think that it must really be hurting if they feel they have to use a law firm to settle dispute between good-willing people, then we had to reply this to explain our position and of course change again the Warning message - stay tuned for the next development!

Dear Moshe,
it seems that you are not satisfied with the curent text on the website, although the Warning is
currently just stating factual things and does contain an apology for the misleading comments
that were there previously, and for which, we assure you, we are very sorry.

For us we thought we were helping you because we directly link your company website and give you 
high credential by stating that you are selling your product to the EPFL, a world recognized name 
for MEMS in general and SU8 in particular.

We are in the first place keeping this free advertisement on this non-commercial website because 
our main concern is to help the community and provide as many source of SU8 as possible, at least 
to drive the price of the SU8 down. But as you understand, what should we do from the promiss of 
Dr Guerin "I will not hesitate to sue all person who will buy and use products from Gerstels that 
are protected by my patents (remover, SU8 with filler)"?
It is our duty, although you may not like it, to warn the readers of the *possible* problem with 
the derived SU8 product for which Dr Guerin does (really) hold patent.

Thus, for the main aspect of your business, the commercialization of SU8, we definitely agree to 
change the text to fit your requirement more closely, because it seems you are not satisfied and 
because we were indeed wrong in the first place (however notice that we state : 
"Two companies have now bought a license from IBM to sell the photoresist : 
    * MicroChem Inc...
    * Gerstel SA..."
which is clear no?!)

However, until you have not clearly established that you can rightfully commercialize the SU8 
with filler product (in your letter and emails I can not find any claim to substantiate this 
currently), by explaining why you don't infringe on Dr Guerin patents and thus that user of SU8 
with filler can not be sued by Dr Guerin, we feel compelled to maintain the warning on the 
derived products on the website. 

Of course we will be happy to modify this last statement, because currently you are the sole 
seller commercializing SU8 with filler, and this product is very interesting for different 
applications, thus we really hope that this problem can be resolved quickly. To help the things 
out, we will be asking Dr Guerin evidence for his statements, and if there are no substantial 
answer in one month time, we shall remove the statement.

Finally, I wish to ensure you that there is no need to spend money on a firm law, had you send an 
email after the previous correction to the website saying that you were not satisfied with the 
change, we would have gladly edited the text. The modification were done in good faith, believing 
that they were corresponding to your requirement. To avoid any problem in this round we will 
mostly use the text you include in your letter - although the tone is very different from the 
rest of the page.

We try to be as fair as possible to everybody here, thus please be sure that there is nothing 
here but pure desinterested service rendered to the community (the website does not bring us one 
cent of revenue, and our name does not appear anywhere there), there is no complot to destabilize 
Gerstel SA either : we need as many SU8 vendors as possible!

Your faithfully,
Maintainer of the SU8 website

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