by Dan Feigelson
This post concerns the second of three recent Israel PTO notices regarding patents. In a nutshell, that notice says that if you can’t do a patent filing electronically, you should send it to mazkirutpatentim@justice.gov.il, with the subject line “Submission due to glitch in EFS”. And if you need to make a payment with the submission, pay separately via the State of Israel government payment system and include the receipt.
In more detail, the second notice was posted on the ILPTO’s website on October 11, and it says that when a user is unable to submit something via the patent electronic filing system, whether that inability is due to planned system maintenance, a system-wide crash, or an individual user being unable to complete his submission “after repeated and reasonable attempts” to do so, the user should send his submission via email to mazkirutpatentim@justice.gov.il, with the subject line “Submission due to glitch in EFS”. This is pretty much what everyone I know has done all along when the IL EFS is down, although hitherto I’ve sent emails to individual ILPTO employees rather to the address given here, which is a general email address for pool of clerks in the patents section of the ILPTO.
The notice goes on to provide details about requirements. Hence, says the notice, the body of the email should include the name of the submitter, the application/patent number, the nature of the submission and any deadline, if applicable. To the extent possible, says the notice, the nature of the glitch should be explained, e.g. through a screenshot or error notice. The email should include a cover letter, if necessary, and any documents being submitted.
If payment of a fee is required, the notice says that the payment receipt must be included (or the information from the payment receipt must be provided). But there’s a rub: since payments to the ILPTO are normally done as part of the submission process – as in, you submit e.g. a request for an extension of time, and then the ILPTO’s EFS sends you to the payment site – and the notice pertains to situations in which the EFS isn’t working, the notice is implicitly saying, use the State of Israel payment system and send us the receipt. But the notice doesn’t provide a link to that payment system, and it takes a few minutes to find it (if you manage to find it). As a public service, I provide it here: https://ecom.gov.il/counterspa/home/14/2/patents.
After submission, says the notice, the ILPTO will decide what date the submission should be accorded. In other words, just because you send the email doesn’t mean the Office will give you the date of the email as the date of submission. The office will enter the documents into the system, and if additional documents are required, will inform the submitter. If it appears there’s a system-wide problem, the Office will seek to inform the public of such and the option to submit by email.
The October 11 notice also says that the Office will monitor submissions by email, in order to address recurring problems, if there are any.
Curiously, members of the email distribution list were notified accordingly, although, like the notice of October 5, the October 11 notice itself doesn’t appear under the “news” section of the ILPTO’s site. And in contrast to the first and third notices, comments were not solicited – the ILPTO just said, “This is the way it is henceforth.”
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