About a year ago, the Israel PTO introduced an online patent database, in both Hebrew and English. The database enables the public to look up applications by publication number, priority application number, attorney docket number and PCT application or publication number. It also identifies related applications, such as divisionals.
For people who are accustomed to using PAIR or epoline, the Israel database leaves much to be desired: while the current application status, and the specification, drawings and allowed claims are available online as pdf files, the file history is not, and must still be ordered for a fee from the ILPTO. And the documents that are available are only available for online viewing (or any other public inspection) after the application has been allowed, not during examination.
Nevertheless, in comparison to what preceded it – viz., nothing – the introduction of the online database was a positive step forward, and one hopes that early publication of Israel patent applications and online file histories will become available sooner rather than later.
The introduction of the online database was part of a longer-term move to paperless file histories, the implementation of which began earlier. For example, several years ago the ILPTO began accepting (and in some cases requiring) submission of prior art documents in electronic format, and more recently the ILPTO began requiring electronic submission of abstracts.
In keeping with this, and figuring I might save some trees, I recently submitted national phase application to the ILPTO as a searchable pdf file on a CD. A few weeks later, I received a call from one of the administrative staff members, who told me that I needed to file a paper copy as well. The gist of the conversation was as follows (I kid you not):
“Why do I need to submit a paper copy?”
“Well, we need a paper copy so we can scan it to pdf format.”
“I already gave you the file in pdf format.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know how to upload that into our system so you’re going to have to send us a paper copy”.
It turns out that this wasn’t an isolated incident. A colleague told me that when he tried to file an application as a pdf file rather than paper, he went through the same thing.
Fast forward to earlier today, when the Commissioner published his Circular no. 76, in which he announced that, hot on the heels of the USPTO announcing a “green” patent initiative, the ILPTO would be begin classifying certain patent applications as “green” and moving them to head of the examination line. In the words of the Commissioner,
“Green applications are applications in which the invention described therein, for which a patent is requested, helps improve the environment, among other ways in that it prevents the causes of global warming [or] reduces air or water pollution [or] advances non-polluting agriculture…”
Based on that description, I’m not sure I’ve got a handle on what constitutes a “green” patent application (heck, looking at the statute and regulations, I’m not sure the Commissioner is even allowed to make up such a new classification), but in order to gain a better understanding I’ve already filed an application that claims “A method for reducing paper usage in Israel and the concomitant use of water, a scarce commodity in Israel, in paper production, comprising allowing an applicant for a patent in Israel to submit his application in electronic form, without requiring him to submit a paper copy of the application”. In view of my own experience described above, such a claim is clearly novel; and inasmuch a electronic filing was already well-known from EFS several years earlier, but not yet adopted in Israel, I think I’ve got a good non-obvious argument as well.
If the Commissioner grants my application, I promise to grant the ILPTO a royalty-free license to practice my invention.
