In Israel, after the ILPTO allows an application, the applicant pays a fee, and then notice that the application is allowed - the so-called "acceptance of the application" - is published in the Patents Journal. This now normally occurs on the 1st of the month on the Gregorian calendar, although if the 1st falls on a day when the ILPTO is closed, then the publication occurs on the next day on which the office is open. Opponents then have three months - non-extendible - to file a notice of opposition. But by statute, if THAT deadline falls on a day when the ILPTO is closed, that deadline gets pushed off. Once the opposition deadline passes without an opposition being filed, the patent automatically grants, although the ILPTO sometimes takes a few days to issue the patent certificate.
The grant date is important, because maintenance (renewal) fees the deadlines for which occurred during the pendency of the application must be paid within three months of grant - minimally, the fee for years 0-6 of the patent, and sometimes for years 7-10 or even for later years.
This year, patent applications for which the "acceptance of the application" was published on July 1 ostensibly became patents on October 2, assuming no opposition was filed by the end of the October 1 deadline. But the ILPTO was closed on October 1 as part of the intermediate days of the Succot festival, and stayed closed until October 8. So the deadline to file oppositions should have been yesterday, October 8, with unopposed application issuing at patents on October 9, and the maintenance fee deadline
Imagine my surprise, then, when this morning I received patent certificates for several patents that listed the issue date as October 2, 2023 - a date on which the Office was closed.
I don't imagine this shortchanging of my clients a week to pay their maintenance fees will be an issue, as we usually report patent grants immediately, and 12 weeks to pay should be sufficient. But it would be nice if the ILPTO got its dates right.
Follow up: I emailed the head examiner at the ILPTO, Simona Aharonovitch, about this problem. Turns out that I alerted them to it last year, and they mostly fixed it, but there's still a glitch: the patent certificates got prepared automatically on October 2, but they weren't mailed until October 9. In fact, potential opponents had the ability to file oppositions through October 8.
What blows my mind is that according to Ms. Aharonovitch, I'm the only one who has ever called this mistake to the PTO's attention. Evidently the big offices are asleep at the wheel.