The Association of Israel Patent Attorneys (AIPA) our esteemed professional organization , otherwise known as the Agudah (and not to be confused with Agudat Yisrael), does not seem able to maintain a list of email addresses of members. Thus despite having paid my annual 2009 membership twice, I do not get these updates and suspect, indeed know, that many other members, particularly sole-practitioners, don’t either.
However, the larger firms do seem to get updates and our firm got a copy that they forwarded to me. As the summary was sent to firms and not to members, it is clearly not confidential, so I am discussing it below:
- Non-licensed Practitioners
It seems that our committee is exploring cooperating with the Israel Law Bar to prevent non-licensed practitioners offering patent services. This is a rare instance where the public and the profession’s interests are aligned, and we hope this initiative bears fruit. It is certainly a better idea than inviting non-member violators to a voluntary hearing which was the Vaad’s previous approach.In this regard, I would like to see Attorneys-at-Law who are no not registered patent attorneys avoid using the term. It is misleading to the public who seem annoyed to have to pay a patent expert to tidy up the mess lawyers create us. - Registering Plant Varieties
A second issue is the law for registering plant varieties. This apparently is maintained by The Volcani Institute which is in itself a problem since they are the largest developer of plant varieties, so have a conflict in regulating the register that they are the largest user of.There is currently one Examiner who though phenomenally knowledgeable is not in the best of health. In what seems a sensible idea, the committee of the Association is lobbying to have the examination and registration handled by the Patent Office. - Amending the constitution
A third issue is amending the constitution of the organization. This one raises a red flag. At the last GM a committee not vastly dissimilar to the new committee and with the same chair-person did not mention amending the constitution and one would imagine that was the correct forum for so doing. At the GM, the only consitutional issue raised, was by myself, where I pointed out that the proxy voting announced on the day to ensure that the current people were chosen, was unconstitutional. the response (by Adv. Freimann, an elder of the profession who wrote the thing) was to tell me that although this was indeed the case, it had never stopped them in the past! Since an oligarchy of 4 offices voting in unison by proxy (without the absentee voters even knowing who would stand) happily determined the incoming committee without worrying that absent members could have registered proxy votes had they known that it was allowed, and without worrying that the move was against the constitution, one wonders why bother amending the constitution which is irrelevant anyway. Indeed, I hazard a guess that I am the only person to note when the organization does things unconsitutionally. Another problem is how will the constitution be amended? We’ve all (at least all those getting the poorly distributed summaries) been invited to submit amendments. Presumably the committee will select those they like, and by proxy vote amend the constitution in one of the committee meetings. So why bother? - Issues For Discussion with Patent Office
The final issue and this is the biggy, all members can submit issues to be brought before the working committee of the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks at the next summit meeting between the two organizations.As a public service, feel free to detail your suggestions here, and I will pass them on to the committee!
