America-Israel Patent Law

Why Is the Israel PTO Advertising For a Private Company?

According to an email announcement in Hebrew sent earlier this month and for which a reminder was sent today, on January 30, the Israel PTO will be holding a video training session covering two topics: how to use an AI search tool from a particular company to look for publications in assessing patentability of ideas and validity of patents, and how to utilize the Israel PTO patent database. The full text of the notice appears below; readers who don’t read Hebrew can cut-and-paste into a machine translation program.

The State of Israel imposes restrictions on its employees in order to avoid conflicts-of-interest, to the point that I can’t buy a friend who works in the Patent Office a cup of coffee if we meet at a restaurant. So I’m confused, to put it mildly, by the fact that the Patent Office is sponsoring what appears to be an advertisement for a particular company. To me, this is akin to the Office running a session on how to use Microsoft Word or Google Drive.

This isn’t the first time the Israel PTO has played favorites. In the past it has sent out notices upon the deaths of certain patent practitioners, but not upon the deaths of others. I don’t see where it’s the ILPTO’s place to send out death notices about ANY practitioners.

ציבור המבקשים, עורכי הדין ועורכי הפטנטים שלום רב,

תזכורת: ביום שלישי הקרוב, 30.1.24, בשעה 12:30 תתקיים הדרכה לציבור על מנוע החיפוש סימלארי  ועל אתר החיפוש של רשות הפטנטים.

על מנת שנוכל לעסוק בנושאים המעניינים אתכם, נודה לכם אם תקדישו כמה דקות לכתיבת נושאים ושאלות בקישור המצ"ב.

כמו כן, לטובת הציבור, מצורפת ההודעה על תוכן ההדרכה המתוכננת וקישור למפגש:

שימוש במנוע חיפוש מבוסס בינה מלאכותית ולמידה עמוקה של חברת סימילארי בע"מ לחיפוש ידע קודם, הפתוח לרשות הציבור ללא עלות.

בנוסף, במסגרת זו נציג גם את כלל האפשרויות הקיימות  ב'אתר החיפוש' של רשות הפטנטים.
מאגר זה מכיל מידע עדכני על פטנטים שהוגשו בישראל ומאפשר ביצוע חיפוש במאגר באמצעות מאפיינים שונים.

המידע הקיים באתר כולל נתונים ביבליוגרפים בהתאם למצב הפרסום של בקשת הפטנט ואת האפשרויות הבאות:

• צפייה בנסח הפטנט
• הפקת תדפיס הנסח
• צפייה במסמכי בקשות לפטנט שהתפרסם דבר קיבולן (תקציר, טופס הבקשה, פירוט, תביעות, שרטוטים).
• אפשרות לעיון באתר בכל המסמכים הנוגעים לבקשות לפטנט שנפתחו לעיון הציבור בהתאם לסעיף 16 (א) לחוק
• שמירת חיפושים וקבלת התראות בעדכון החיפוש

ההדרכה תתקיים ביום שלישי ה30 לינואר בין 12:30- 13:30

קישור מצ"ב

 

Did the USPTO Implicitly Acknowledge Last Week's IT System Failure?

Last week, the USPTO's computer systems crashed. Not just on the patent side, but also the trademark side Sometimes you could get in, sometimes you couldn't...eventually I found myself completely unable to access the USPTO's computers - not even the USPTO's homepage, www.uspto.gov - unless I changed something in my browser's setting (the DNS setting, for those of you who are interested; I would never have figured this out on my own but a nice computer-savvy colleague in the USA figure this out.)

 

During this system crash, I needed to file a response to a notice of missing parts in a national phase application to reduce the number of claims and eliminate multiple dependent claims, so as to avoid paying excess claim fees.  I was able to file the response on Tuesday the 16th, which was timely. But by the same deadline I also needed to pay a surcharge for the late submission of the inventor declarations, and because of the PTO's IT issues, I was only able to pay that on Wednesday. (In principle one can fax a credit card payment form to the USPTO, but on Tuesday that was not an option in this case).

 

This left me wondering, is the USPTO now going to make me pay an extension fee, as penance for the PTO's self-induced computer glitches?  I decided to wait and see what happens, and determined that if I didn't get a filing receipt by the one-month extension deadline, I would pay the extension fee.

 

This week I got my answer: a revised filing receipt, and change in the status of the application to "docketed - ready for examination", as well a notation in the transaction history "application is now complete".  No extension fee necessary.

 

I'm not sure if the processing of my response was due to someone's oversight (i.e. I was expected to pay an extension fee, and someone didn't notice I didn't pay it), or if the PTO is implicitly acknowledging its screw-up. If the latter, it would have been nice if the PTO posted a notice to all of us who had payment problems, informing us that the payment deadline was extended and no extension fee was due.

Like, Who Else Can See It? More Fun With The Israel PTO's Electronic Filing System

So I filed a national phase application, and then shortly thereafter - before notice of the filing the application published - the client instructed me to file some amendments to the text. 

As I've mentioned on previous occasions, one of the annoying things about the Israel PTO's EFS is that it has a predefined set classifications for documents that are being filed, and miscellaneous" is not among the choices. So you have to wade through dozens of choices for documents to be filed. Fortunately, there is a category for amendments to an already-filed specification - two, in fact, one for filing before substantive examination has begun and one for filing during substantive examination. Of course, these, like many categories, as classified as "request to ...", even though I'm not asking anyone to do anything: I'm telling them, we're amending the spec, and there's no discretion here for which need to ask the ILPTO's permission.

What I found silly was that after I chose the task description, and then typed in the number of the application, and the system didn't choke and say "you can't do that task in that application at this time", I got the following screen:

That last line, in brown, says, "name of the application: not yet published".

Who are they hiding the information from? I'm the one who filed the application! And the way the system is set up, I can only get to this screen if I'm authorized to file. If entered the number of an application with which I'm not associated, a text box will pop up that says "You're not authorized to file in that application, you ninny!"