America-Israel Patent Law Blog

In previous posts I've quoted my colleague who refers to Israel as a country with 21st century technology and a 19th century patent office.  I usually mention this when complaining that we still don’t have electronic filing of patent documents, or mocking the policy that enables applicants to pay fees over the internet but then requires them to send a physical copy of the receipt to the ILPTO for the fee to be counted.  Today I was treated to another reminder of this wonderful system.  I translate the email correspondence from the Hebrew, which speaks for itself.

To: [name withheld to avoid embarrassing the guilty]

From: Daniel Feigelson

December 29, 2013, 3:27 PM

Shalom XXX.  Attached is a response and a set of claims that were faxed to your office.  My fax machine indicates that all pages were successfully transmitted, but when I phoned to make sure that someone was actually processing the papers no one in the secretary pool answered.  So I’m sending this email to you to ensure that no one can say the response wasn’t timely filed.

[What bears mentioning is that no one picked up because the secretaries at the ILPTO don’t answer the phone after 1 PM.  In fact, officially the ILPTO isn’t even open to the public after 1 PM.]

To Daniel Feigelson

From: [name withheld because after all, he only works there]

December 29, 2013, 4:16 PM

Shalom.  We received the documents you sent.  In the future please send documents to the office in one of the accepted ways – by post [i.e. snail mail – DJF], by courier or by personal delivery.  Delivery by fax is only permitted for in special cases and not as a standard practice.

I’m surprised he didn’t add “mule”, “donkey”, “camel” and “carrier pigeon” to the accepted modes of delivery. 

I’ve noted before that Israel isn’t an oil producer.  The ILPTO’s policy on document delivery thus forces applicants to subsidize our not-so-friendly neighbors by paying for gas-consuming taxicabs to bring documents to the ILPTO.  But if it’s not going to move into the 21st century with electronic filing of patent applications, you’d think that at least by 2014 it would have adopted 20th century technology in the form of fax machines that the public is invited to use to submit patent applications and related documents.