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.