Over the past two weeks, the Israel Ministry of Health has been easing corona virus-related restrictions. Students in grades 11-12 have returned (partly) to classes and matriculation examinations, younger grades are returning to school, and today pre-schools and some malls were scheduled to re-open.
In keeping with this, today the ILPTO posted two notices about work during the corona virus period. The first pertains to work in general and deadlines. The bottom line: although the ILPTO is not allowing visitations from the public (except for hearings before the Commissioner), it is open for business as usual, and all departments are sufficiently staffed to answer telephones during business hours.
Critically, the previously-announced extensions of deadlines and the ability to obtain extensions of deadlines, reported here here and here, remain in place. Parties with business before the ILPTO who were not able to meet a deadline may thus request extensions on the basis of inability to respond due to corona virus-related circumstances, and the ILPTO will weigh such requests, even when this might derogate from the ILPTO's previously announced policies. However, statutory deadlines that the Commissioner is not empowered to extend remain in place. In keeping with this, the ILPTO says it won't send out letters closing files until June 30...but we're aware of a few cases in which such letters were sent in the past two weeks, so rely on the ILPTO's word at your own risk.
The second notice from today spells out procedures for parties coming to the ILPTO to appear in a hearing. As this information is not relevant to the vast majority of readers of this blog, we're not summarizing it.