In a series of seminars open to trademark practitioners, the Trademark Dept. of the Israel Patent Authority is launching a new interface that will improve on-line filing and searching of Israel trademarks.
Israel was supposed to implement Madrid, but it has been put on hold as the Trademark Dept. was not ready for it. The new system goes a long way to paperless trademark filing and prosecution, and also enables searching of graphic elements using Boolean search techniques.
The trademark department under the management of Senior Examiner, Nurit Maoz, has analyzed and characterized all the marks on file (pending, issued and lapsed). This greatly improves the efficiency of trademark searching and should improve the examination thereof.
Despite recent reservations of the Commissioner of Patents to allow such marks, we note that the system does allow filing of 3D marks. Filing sounds and smells is not (yet) supported.
