Last month, a man walked in to a copy shop in Petach Tikvah, a midsize town in central Israel, and told the proprietor he wanted to print 40 T-shirts with Albert Einstein’s face emblazoned on the front. Not a problem, said the proprietor, Ben Farag. At the customer’s request, he printed out a sample T-shirt and handed it over. Which is where the story begins.

This week, Farag received a letter from a law firm representing Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which owns the intellectual property rights to Einstein’s estate. “Our client,” it read, “was astounded to discover that at your store—you are printing shirts and other products with the late Prof. Albert Einstein’s image. The use that you made is public and commercial use which constitutes damage to the brand and blatant damage to the rights of our client under the law.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was all a sting; the law firm’s letter included a snapshot taken by the ostensible customer, showing Farag holding the sample T-shirt. Hebrew U., the letter continued, demanded 20,000 NIS (approximately $5,600) in compensation.

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