The IP Factor

There is a new Judicial Review Officer at the Israel Patent Office.  The job has been vacant for a while, and it is the first time, to my knowledge, that a woman has held this august position. Not that women lawyers are rare in the Israel public sector. Indeed, the Current Chief Justice is a woman.

Ms. Shoshani Caspi used to serve on the Israel desk at WIPO, where she was replaced by Li Maor, also a female.

Actually women are well-represented in the Israel IP world, with the head of the trademark department also a woman, and a number of examiners of both patents and trademarks being female. Women are well represented in IP management positions at university technology transfer companies, and the long serving head of the Association of Israel Patent Attorneys, Ms. Michal Hackmey is also female.

Not surprisingly, following university trends, most of the female patent attorneys are from life sciences backgrounds, but there are a couple of chemists and a materials scientist as well. I started my IP career under the mentorship of Ms. Michal Hackmey and then under Ms. Debbie Gador, so personally have learned a lot from women. 

In academia, we have Dr. Shlomit Ravid and Professor Nava Elkin Koren, both of whom have some way out ideas about IP – but hey, that’s what makes life fun.

(The double-barrelled sirname is typical of women lawyers in Israel who usually retain their name, but add their husbands following a court ruling that every women has a name – which is about as rediculous as Ahasuerus’ ruling that every man should rule in his household. 

There is a noticeable dearth of women inventors in Israel, but also worldwide. Of the hundreds of applications I’ve drafted, there are number of group efforts where one or more of the named inventors was female, but it is difficult to tell who actually invended the product. The only patent I recall drafting for a serious invention by a female, was for a method of making seamless underwear for Delta, invented by Rachel Israel, a charming client of mine. We managed to get that patent in the States without any office actions in time for Xmas, where the patented panties were marketed by Victoria’s Secret. Ms Israel is a mechanical engineer, and got into the field from the technical end.

An aunt of mine who was born and brought up in a secular Kibbutz background – i.e. an egalitarian society before it became trendy – maintains that women like the driving force to innovate, and if left to them, we would still be living in caves, but they’d be nicely decorated, with clean swept floors.

Anyway, in the course of reviewing other IPO decisions, I look forward to reviewing Ms Shoshani Caspi’s first few decisions and it will be interesting to see if there is a woman’s touch, or indeed if there is any discernable bias or trend in her approach to IP in contrast to that of other Judicial Review Officers and of the Commissioner, himself.