BERLIN—Klaus Wowereit, the governing mayor of Berlin, admitted today that a judge at the London Court of International Arbitration dismissed all patent claims raised by the municipality of Berlin last summer. The mayor had filed a patent claim in July on a wall that Israel is currently constructing inside the occupied Palestinian territories. Judge Hubert Dunn ruled that Berlin’s patent on the Berlin Wall was “generically and fundamentally different” from the wall now being constructed by Israel.

Dunn held that Berlin’s patent did not cover the size or the length of the Israeli wall, which is already higher, and which will ultimately be much longer, than the Berlin Wall. The Israeli wall will feature observation towers, electric fences, trenches, cameras, sensors, and security patrols, and will ultimately encompass the full 350 km border around the West Bank. The Berlin Wall between West and East Berlin only measured 107 km in length, and featured a staggered system of barriers.

Dunn further ruled that the Berlin Wall was not unique. “China could file a patent claim as well,” he noted during the court session. He also referred to a British wall, built in 1938 along the Lebanese border, and the thousand-mile fence that America Firster Pat Buchanan recently proposed erecting along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Israeli officials hailed the judge’s decision as a “significant victory” not only for wall builders everywhere, but also for Israeli society as a whole. Yacoov Dornstein, a senior Israeli wall official told BNN: “We have a long tradition of building walls. We built the Western Wall, the section of the western supporting wall of the Temple Mount which has remained intact since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. We built a wall around Gaza, and now we build another wall.”

Some Israeli officials saw anti-Semitic intentions behind Berlin’s patent claim. “Why haven’t they filed a patent claim against China?” Dornstein asked rhetorically.