A few months ago, Israel made headlines for implementing, for the first time, the state's right to grant a compulsory license for pharmaceuticals. Today, the Israel PTO concluded another first, although not of as nearly widespread interest as the compulsory license decision: the ILPTO formally announced per Rule 11D(a) that its electronic filing system for patents is down, and that it was thus implementing Rule 11D(b), viz. allowing the filing of documents in paper.
By way of background, in late 2015 the ILPTO launched its electronic filing system. The implementing regulations for this included the provision that, beginning in June 2016, practitioners are required to use this system for filing. Those rules also included the provision that if the system was expected to go offline, or that it crashed unexpectedly, the ILPTO would announce the outage, and practitioners would be able to avail themselves of paper filings. But the arrangement in Israel is rather forgiving: if the outage concludes before the deadline for submitting a paper, the practitioner still has up to the later of 2 business days from the actual conclusion of the outage, or 2 business days from the ILPTO announcing that the outage has concluded, to submit the document in paper. If the outage is ongoing on the deadline for submitting a document, then the practitioner has up 2 business days from the deadline to submit the document in paper, and the submission will be deemed to have been timely filed, with no extension fee due.
The rules also include the provision that if there's a problem with the ILPTO's filing system that isn't announced on the ILPTO's site, or if the practitioner has a problem with his own computer that prevents electronic filing, then the practitioner may file in paper within 2 business days of the deadline, provided that the filing is accompanied by a declaration attesting to the circumstances that prevented the electronic filing.
In practice, the ILPTO EFS has crashed numerous times since 2016, and when that has happened, the ILPTO has accepted submissions by email, with an explanation of what transpired, and waiving the requirement for a formal declaration. This is the first time the ILPTO has actually made an announcement per Rule 11D(a).
Interestingly, the announcement, which as of this writing was sent out by email but does not yet appear on the ILPTO's web site (see screen shot below), states that it applies to all patent filings, except for initial patent application filings, which it says should be sent by email to a particular email address. The rules do not require submission of any documents by email, and they don't authorize the ILPTO to require email submission: they allow for paper filing. In fact, the ILPTO's system allows for the filing of patent applications by non-practitioners, but follow-up filings are only possible through the part of the system for practitioners. Nevertheless, I would personally prefer to file by email, because it's easier to prove that the materials were sent to the relevant ILPTO employee and that the requisite fees were paid than when filing via the EFS.