This morning the Israel PTO sent out a notice that its new patent search database will be going online this Thursday, March 11, and as a result, the electronic filing system will be down from 15:00 on March 10 through 07:00 on March 11. What new patent search database, you ask? I don't know, I don't recall seeing an announcement about plans for a new patent search database, let alone an invitation to do alpha- or beta-testing on the system. Maybe I missed the announcement, but involving the public in software development has not traditionally been the ILPTO's strong suit.
Case in point: I recently filed a national phase application in Israel, and today the client asked me to file voluntary amendments. Now, normally I advise clients to wait with these until later, since in any event no examination will occur until after we receive and respond to a pre-examination letter from the ILPTO, and we can amend the claims when responding. But I needed to file another document in this case, for kicks I decided to file the amended claims now. But it took some doing to get the ILPTO's electronic filing system to let me do it. That's because IL-EFS pre-defines a set list of types of submissions, and if your filing doesn't fit into one of the categories, you're out of luck - there's no choice for "miscellaneous communication". Amended claims can be filed with a response to the pre-examination letter, or with a supplemental response to a pre-examination letter (i.e. a supplemental IDS), or with a response to an OA. But there's no general category of "amended claims", and the system wouldn't let me file using any of the categories that provide for the submission of amended claims, since this application doesn't have an outstanding OA, or an outstanding pre-examination letter.
Then I discovered that I could file a "supplemental response to a pre-examination letter" that included the amended claims...even though no pre-examination letter has been received, let alone a response to such filed. Thank heaven for small manifestations of illogic. (In fact, I'd discovered this fact four years ago, and blogged about it, but had forgotten it. So in this case I suppose that in a perverse way it's good that no one at the ILPTO was listening.)
Of course, this IL-EFS mess could have been avoided had they done some beta-testing before taking this system online five years ago, or if they listened to us users and fixed problems in the system...but what would the point of that have been?
So I don't know what's in store in the new online ILPTO patent database. Guess we'll find out on Thursday.
One interesting side-point: the regulations regarding electronic filing require registered practitioners to file using IL-EFS, and only provide for filing by other means if either (a) the practitioner files a declaration explaining the glitch in his own personal system that prevented him from using IL-EFS, or (b) the ILPTO announces on its web site that the the system will be down. Hitherto, I have never had to file such a declaration: every time there's been a problem the employees at the ILPTO have taken care of it based on my emails and telephone call. But I believe this is the first time that the ILPTO has announced in advance that IL-EFS will be down. Curiously, though, as of this writing, the announcement doesn't appear on the ILPTO's web site: I only know about it because of the email notification that was to the ILPTO's email-list subscribers, and because of an announcement that appeared on the IL-EFS registered-user site once I had logged in (shown in the screen shot).