A Small Favor for Israel Patent Applicants

This morning the Israel PTO sent out an update regarding applicants' reporting of prior art to the ILPTO.  Similar to the USA, Israel imposes a duty of disclosure throughout the application process.  Henceforth, when listing publications cited against the novelty or inventive step of corresponding applications elsewhere, applicants will only need to provide the ILPTO with copies of non-patent literature; the ILPTO will apparently obtain patent publications for itself.  Don't know who was behind this change, but I think I speak for the entire community of Israel patent applicants and practitioners when I say thanks for injecting a small but welcome measure of sanity into local practice.