Plans for publication of the
Vilna Shas were announced in 1834 by the owners of the
Vilna-Horadna Press, Menachem Man Ream and Simcha Zimmel. Along with a copyright, a restriction was placed on publishing another
Shas for twenty years. A rival edition of the Talmud, the
Slavuta Shas, had been published almost three decades earlier, in 1807. The publishers of the Slavuta Talmud argued that the Vilna Edition infringed on their rabbinical court-ordered 25-year license to be the sole publishers of the text. Although more than 25 years had passed since the date of the first edition of the Slavuta Shas, only 21 years had passed after its latest edition. ==References==