I'm prosecuting a case before the Israel PTO in which we requested suspension of examination. Under current ILPTO practice, when an applicant requests suspension of examination1, the ILPTO sends the applicant a letter shortly before the application is due to be examined, giving the applicant a period to time in which to pay a fee for suspension.2 After payment of the fee, the ILPTO normally sends a letter by email, telling the applicant that prosecution is suspended until date X. When date X approaches, the applicant can request an additional suspension if warranted.
In the case in question, we paid the fee for suspension last year, but the ILPTO never sent that "the suspension is in effect until date X" letter - if it had, even if we hadn't received the letter by email or snail mail, a copy of the letter would appear in the online file history in the database, and no such copy of the letter appears in the file history. The non-sending of the letter, and its absence from the online file history, didn't particularly bother me because in the ILPTO database the status of the case is listed as "examination suspended" (see photo below).
Nevertheless, today, in correspondence with someone at the ILPTO, I pointed out that no "your suspension expires on date X" letter was ever sent. And presto, within a few hours I received such a letter by email.
But there's a glitch: the letter bears the date last year on which we paid the fee for suspension, implying that the letter was actually sent last year, when of course it wasn't. In fact, every letter generated by the ILPTO and sent to a practitioner by email includes a code in the name of the pdf file, indicating the date and time on which the system generated the letter. This name of this particular file includes the date "03_03_2022" and the time "34129 PM".
As mentioned above, as of this writing, the letter hasn't been posted to the database: the last entry in the database is my cover letter from last year informing the ILPTO that we were paying the fee for suspension. But the database is updated overnight. I'll be checking in the morning to see if this antedated letter is posted to the database, and if so, what's listed as the date of posting - 2022, or 2021. Stayed tuned.
1The ILPTO currently only allows an applicant to request suspension in a particular window of time prior to the commencement of substantive examination.
2You can read here about why the requirement for payment is ultra vires.