America-Israel Patent Law

Much Ado About... (Israel PTO Patent Filing Back Online)

If you're familiar with Shakespeare's plays, you know the last word in the title above.

It took the Israel PTO longer than expected, but by the end of last Thursday its patent electronic filing system was back online.

As far as I can tell, the only change made was to the interface for filing new patent applications. And the only really significant difference is that if you file a national phase of a PCT (which is something like 95% of patent filing in Israel), the system will now pull the bibliographic information from WIPO. This is certainly a nice feature, but I'm not sure it warranted a meeting at the Israel PTO (and concomitant livestream) to explain that it was being implemented. They did implement something so that now you can see a complete list of the applications you've filed, but as far as I can it's only with respect to what you've filed, and only since they implemented this new feature - none of my old filings show up there.

Otherwise, things haven't changed:

Applicants, even for national phase filings, must still upload the description, drawings and claims as separate pdf files. 

When filing responses, you still have to choose from a pre-set list of document descriptions, which still doesn't include "miscellaneous", and the system still tells you whether or not you can file a particular type of paper in a given application (an aspect of the system that sometimes is a good things but sometimes is not). 

The system still doesn't give you a filing acknowledgement immediately upon filing, showing what you filed with a hash function value so that if necessary later you can prove what you filed; rather, you still have to wait for an email that includes the very documents you filed (although with their size slightly changed) to take up space in your email folder.

When you go to pay a fee, the system still boots you out of EFS and into the government payment system.

And there's still nothing like private PAIR or ePCT that allows the filer to see, immediately after filing, what it is he filed: there's still only a single public database, and the documents in the file only become visible after the application is opened to the public.

Still Waiting for the Israel PTO's Patent E-Filing to Go Back Online

5:34 AM on September 7, system was supposed to be back online at 10:30 yesterday morning.  And no notice or emails from the ILPTO explaining what the problem is - we just get the "under construction" page when we try to go to the EFS page.  This means no filing of new applications, no submission of responses, and no paying of maintenance fees, among other things. I feel sorry for the secretaries who must have been inundated with emails containing things meant for electronic filing.

For the cynical, I have a possible answer to the question about why this work was done on a weekday, and not at a time when the Israel PTO is closed (like the first week of October, which this year will coincides with hol hamoed, the intermediate days of the Succot holiday): yesterday and today, the largest patent firm in Israel is on a retreat, with only a skeleton staff in the office. So when those guys aren't working, it must be ok for the Patent Office to effectively be closed too. That may be pure speculation, but in a small country like Israel it's not an absurd speculation.

At least the Israel Patents Database is still online...which is a good argument for keeping the filing and viewing functions in separate systems. (Hear that, designers of the USPTO's thus-far-atrocious PatentCenter? Oh, right, you never listen to the public anyway...)

Previous posts on the launch of Israel's new patent EFS: New Israel PTO Patent Electronic Filing System - Introductory Meeting, Israel Electronic Patent Filing to be Offline on September 6, Oh Where, Oh Where is My Israel PTO Electronic Filing System?

Oh Where, Oh Where is My Israel PTO Electronic Filing System?

System was supposed to be online today at 10:30. It's now 17:35 and we're still waiting - getting a "this page under construction" (or "undergoing maintenance") screen instead of a login screen. I don't have any deadlines at the ILPTO today but I pity those who do.

I have to ask, again, Why couldn't this work have been done early on Friday the 8th - when the ILPTO is closed and therefore deadlines are pushed off?

Not going to discuss the substance of yesterday's presentation about the new system until after I actually get to work with the system.  But, in memory of a now-defunct blog about IP in Israel, I will say that a friend who was physically present at the ILPTO said the pastries were good.

Israel Electronic Patent Filing to be Offline on September 6

In conjunction with the launch of its new electronic filing system (details of which will only be revealed to the public tomorrow, September 5), the ILPTO announced this morning via its email distribution list that its EFS will be offline on Wednesday, September 6 from midnight until 10:30 AM. Pending filing which have been saved for later submission will be erased as part of this process.

Why this work couldn't have been done early on Friday the 8th - when the ILPTO is closed and therefore deadlines are pushed off - is a mystery. The advantage of such scheduling is of course that if things don't go as planned, there's time to fix them before business resumes and deadlines need to be met.

Let us hope that things go better for the Israel PTO than they did for the USPTO last week, which similarly scheduled computer systems maintenance for a workday (starting at 10 PM rather than midnight), and then had its systems down for most of the following workday - no PAIR, no EFS, no Patentcenter, and no way to pay fees. And no word on why they didn't schedule the work for early Saturday morning at the beginning of a long holiday weekend.