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At-a-glance: The Patent Office 4 Hasadna St, Talpiot, PO Box 53420, Jerusalem 91533, Israel Tel: +972 2 5651660 Fax: +972 2 5651770 Email: patent@justice.gov.il Website: www.justice.gov.il/mojeng Israel saw a number of developments in 2010. Most... [more]

Israel saw a number of developments in 2010. Most significantly, on September 1 Israel acceded to the Madrid Protocol, allowing firms to file multi-class applications on behalf of clients, foreign clients to directly designate an Israeli firm and local clients to file foreign applications through local firms. On the flip side, local clients no longer need local firms to make applications. The developments have given rise to one unforeseen boost in work from clients looking to "lump their existing single class applications into multiclass applications," in the words of one local lawyer. Another immediate consequence was that small firms and start-ups were freed to consider making foreign applications where they were previously put off by costs.

The Protocol had not yet had much of an impact on statistics in early 2011, however one leading firm reports: "We are expecting a drop of about 50% due to the Protocol, but we anticipate more contentious proceedings because these are dealt with nationally." The market saw what one lawyer called a "tremendous increase" in trade mark litigation, although no one was sure whether it was connected to the Protocol. Among the trade mark work of 2010, Hachette litigated over its fashion magazine ELLE, Hasbro litigated over its brand Guess Who, L'Oréal launched an anti-counterfeit campaign, McDonald's registered its I'm Lovin' It trade mark and Christian Dior secured a seizure of counterfeit goods.

In 2010 Israel also became a member of the OECD and made an agreement with the US government to be gradually removed from the US Watch List. The terms were under discussion in 2011 and partly depend on amendments to the Trade Mark and Patent Act. Domain names with Hebrew characters were also implemented at the close of 2010 and small changes were made to the Trade Mark Ordinance that served to increase protection to trade mark holders.

Firms noted greater activity in copyright, in trade mark prosecution and an up-tick in life-sciences patent prosecutions. Patent litigation remained relatively quiet, with only a handful of big cases mostly related to the pharmaceutical industry. Major cases included: Unipharma v GlaxoSmithKline (over the diabetes drug Avandia), the State of Israel v Omrix Biopharma, Merck v the Israel Bio-Engineering Project (over a multiple-sclerosis drug) and Teva v Merck (over the drug sitagliptin).

Elsewhere, the market saw an industry-driven move to provide greater support to inventors and it saw the end of the tenure of the patent and trade mark registrar, who successfully cut down the backlog at the patent office, increased its number of services and the number of attorneys and brought the office into the Madrid Protocol