Last week, Israel deposited the instrument of accession to the Geneva Act (1999) of the Hague Agreement. The Hague Agreement is to designs what the Madrid system is to trademarks: an international filing system that enables an applicant to obtain design protection in several countries at once. This accession to the Hague Agreement means that as of January 3, 2020, Israelis will be able to file a single design application that covers over 50 countries, and applicants from those countries can include Israel in their Hague design applications. Announcements of the event can be found in English on WIPO’s site and in Hebrew on the ILPTO site.
Israel’s accession to the Hague system is the culmination of many years of work, principally by Howard Poliner and his team at the Justice Ministry, which drafted the new Designs statute that came into effect last year (which contains the legislative provisions that enabled Israel’s accession to the agreement), as well as the implementing regulations. The former legislation needed enactment by the entire Knesset, the latter legislation needed the approval of the Constitution, Statute and Law committee and the Justice Minister. And the accession needed cabinet approval as well, which hasn’t been easy to come by in a year that has already seen two election cycles.
Related blog post: an ill-fated attempt by the ILPTO to facilitate partial use the Hague systems for designs in the absence of legislation permitting such use.