Israel Patent Office

The ILPO's stated purpose is to provide an adequate and accessible intellectual-property protection environment that encourages innovation and protects competition.[1] It examines whether patent, trademark, and design applications qualify for exclusive rights, issues grants upon successful examination, and maintains the corresponding public registers.[4] Beyond registration functions, the office runs a library and publication services dealing with patents, designs, and trademarks, and it provides advice on copyright and other matters related to intellectual and industrial property.[4]

The office's broader mandate encompasses encouraging invention development and patent registration, promoting international competitiveness, increasing public awareness of industrial-property rights, and developing publicly accessible patent, trademark, and design databases.[2] The growing importance of the office has been attributed to an increasing number of local patent applications and greater interest in intellectual and industrial property rights, which heightened the need for adequate examination.[4]

The ILPO administers the full lifecycle of IP rights: patent applications, examinations, grants, renewals, reinstatements, and patent-term extensions; trademark applications and renewals; design applications, registrations, and international Hague System design applications; opposition and cancellation proceedings; and patent-attorney licensing examinations.[1]

Israeli patents and their exploitation were long governed by Patent Law No. 60 of 1967, as amended, which took effect on April 1, 1968.[5] That law included restrictions on filing abroad when an invention was considered to have military value.[5]

In 2006, the Israeli government approved the creation of the ILPO under an Executive Agency model intended to provide greater managerial flexibility, an independent budget, and direct accountability to the Minister of Justice, with the goal of improving public service.[2] The new authority was created to replace the Patents, Designs and Trademarks Division of the Ministry of Justice. Under the proposed framework, the authority's director was to receive broad discretion over budgeting, finance, human resources, recruitment, and employment while committing to measurable quantitative and qualitative performance targets; the authority was also expected to finance itself through its own revenues and operate as a Trading Fund.[2]

Patent-examiner training was described as lasting approximately two years. The 2006 reform plan proposed semiannual recruitment, a special trainee contract, a three-year probationary period following training, and more flexible salary, bonus, and promotion arrangements intended to reduce the loss of trained examiners to other employers.[2]

Israel joined the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in 1996, enabling Israeli applicants to file a single international application covering potential protection in multiple PCT member states and to receive up to 30 months before entering the national phase in selected countries.[6] A 2010 report stated that the ILPO had been authorized through an agreement with WIPO to perform international searches and preliminary examinations, initially for applications by Israeli residents and citizens. The ILPO's 2022 annual report confirms its subsequent operation as an International Searching and Preliminary Examining Authority.[7][1]

The ILPO and the Intellectual Property Law Division are the principal government authorities overseeing the legal protection and enforcement of intellectual-property rights in Israel.[3] Israel's IP protection regime has undergone substantial changes in recent decades as the Israeli economy transformed into a knowledge-based economy, and the government recognizes intellectual-property theft as imposing costs on rights holders, reducing tax revenues, and slowing economic growth.[3]

Israel is a member of the World Trade Organization and WIPO, and is a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the Universal Copyright Convention, the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, and the Patent Cooperation Treaty.[3]

Basic patent protection begins on the filing date and lasts 20 years.[8] For certain registered medicines, an ethical-drug manufacturer may request a patent-term extension of up to five years, subject to statutory restrictions and a total protection limit tied to the first marketing authorization.[9]

The 2018 New Designs Law brought Israel into compliance with the Hague System for the international registration of industrial designs.[3] It replaced the earlier design-protection arrangement under the Patents and Designs Ordinance of 1925, extended registered-design protection from 15 to 25 years subject to novelty and individual-character requirements, and introduced three years of protection for certain unregistered designs—a measure intended to help small-business designers avoid the expense of repeatedly registering designs within a short period.[10][11] The Designs Law defines the Israel Patent Office as the Authority established under section 156 of the Patents Law and provides that the Commissioner of Patents also serves as Commissioner of Designs.[11]

Applicants may request expedited patent and trademark examination. The 2022 annual report records the use of accelerated examination, while the cited legal study identifies Regulation 35 of the 1968 Patent Regulations and Regulation 22(c) of the 1940 Trademark Regulations as the relevant provisions.[1][12]

The ILPO is located at 1 Agudat Sport Hapoel Street, Technology Park, Building 5, Malha, Jerusalem.[1] It falls within the Ministry of Justice's area of administration, registration, and supervision of property and other rights—a ministerial portfolio that includes patents, copyrights, trademarks, and designs and is overseen by the Ministry's Director-General.[4]

The office is organized into a Commissioner's Office and Legal Department, an Intellectual Property Adjudicator, a Patent Register Office, a Patent Department, a PCT Department, a Trademarks Department, a Designs Department, and supporting units covering human resources and training, finance and budgeting, public relations and information, research and information administration, international relations, and quality management.[1] The Patent Department includes specialist teams for biotechnology, chemistry and pharmaceuticals, computers and communications, medical devices, mechanics and electronics, and physics.[1]

The Registrar of Patents, the Deputy Registrar, and the Intellectual Property Adjudicator are authorized to conduct proceedings concerning appeals from examiners' decisions, oppositions to registration, and requests to cancel registered rights. These proceedings take place within the office's tribunal, and decisions of the Registrar may be appealed to the district court.[13]

The office's revenue is derived from fees. In 2022, reported revenue totaled 151,521,183, comprising 63,817,753 from patent fees, 80,307,760 from trademark fees, 6,018,585 from PCT fees, and 1,377,085 from design fees, against reported expenses of 76,733,000.[1]

Patent applications filed in Israel in 2022 increased by 5% from 2021 and by 35% over the preceding five years.[1] The Patent Department conducted 7,469 first examinations of national applications, 5,952 re-examinations, 1,436 examinations under PCT Chapter I, and 88 under Chapter II. Of 680 applications first filed in Israel, 43% underwent expedited examination, and divisional applications constituted 37% of applications examined by the specialist teams.[1]

Biotechnology applications increased by 56% over five years, and biotechnology examination pendency increased by four months, making it the only field that did not meet the ILPO service charter in 2022.[1] In 2016, the authority's average patent examination time was reported as 3.5 months. Following an electronic-filing option introduced in December 2015 and a design-regulations reform completed in December 2016, all stages of application filing and correspondence during examination could be conducted online.[6]

Under the PCT, the ILPO serves Israeli applicants as Receiving Office (RO/IL), International Searching Authority (ISA/IL), and International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA/IL).[1] In 2022, Israeli applicants filed 1,417 international applications with the ILPO as Receiving Office, compared with 1,563 in 2021; 945 applications, or 67%, designated the ILPO as their international searching and examining authority.[1] The office issued 1,436 international search reports that year—1,179 for Israeli applicants and 257 for U.S. applicants—along with 88 international preliminary examination reports; approximately 85% of the reports included at least one X- or Y-category citation.[1]

Trademark applications filed in 2022 were similar in number to 2021, while the number of classes increased by 9% year over year and 25% over five years. Approximately 25,424 classes underwent initial examination and 21,207 underwent re-examination; 7% of applications received expedited examination.[1] Class 9, covering scientific, electrical, computer-communications, and software-related goods, was requested in 3,278 applications, representing 27% of applications filed.[1]

In 2022, 1,727 design-registration applications were filed: 891 directly in Israel and 836 through the Hague System. The office noted that Israel's accession to the Hague System had not yet produced the expected significant increase in design applications.[1] Legal proceedings initiated in 2022 totaled 77 patent proceedings, 195 trademark proceedings, and 5 design proceedings; trademark proceedings fell 20% from the previous year.[1]

As of the end of 2016, the authority employed approximately 200 people, the majority professional examiners. Women constituted 59% of employees, approximately 9% were members of minority groups, and the largest age cohorts were employees aged 31–40 (38%) and 41–50 (30%).[6] The 2022 annual report listed 182 employees across the main operational units.[1]

The office's international work has included relationships with organizations involved in protecting industrial-property rights and addressing legal questions arising from technology transfers, including WIPO, UNESCO, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.[4]

Israel's international intellectual-property activity has included participation in a working group drafting a model law for developing countries on inventions and know-how, a UNCTAD committee preparing an international code on technology transfers to developing countries, and a diplomatic conference revising the Paris Convention on industrial-property protection.[4]

A 2019 INSS study described the ILPO as collaborating with China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) through information exchanges, mutual recognition of patent-registration processes, and cooperation on intellectual-property protection.[14] A separate INSS study identified the Patents Authority in the Ministry of Justice as a body that should participate in a proposed steering committee on intellectual-property management in Israel's defense establishment, alongside the Ministry of Defense, IDF technological units, military industries, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Economy's chief scientist.[15]

One significant question that has come before the office concerns whether an artificial-intelligence system can qualify as an inventor under Israeli patent law. In a decision on an application by Stephen Thaler—who claimed the invention had been created entirely by an AI system—Registrar and Patent Authority head Ofir Alon interpreted the term "inventor" in Israel's Patents Law as referring to a human being rather than a machine.[16] Alon held that the statutory chain of rights begins with a human inventor and then passes to the owner of the invention. He concluded that broader policy questions about AI-generated inventions should be resolved by the legislature rather than through an expanded interpretation of the existing statute.[16]