Region: Africa & Middle East

The Tel Aviv District Court recently ruled in favour of the Tommy Hilfiger Group after it brought suit against Machsan Hayevuan and its owner Elad Suissa for breach of the rights under the TOMMY HILFIGER trademark. The ruling is a signal to all parallel importers in Israel to review their current practice carefully and to consider whether they are maintaining the proper balance between fair use of their marketed goods and not infringing IP rights.

31 October 2012

Recently published guidelines for examiners with regard to overlapping subject matter have clarified the definition of "overlapping subject matter" and provide an insight into the strategy for drafting and prosecuting divisional and continuation applications before the Israeli Patent and Trademark Office.

13 June 2012

In June 2012 the Israeli Patent Office will start functioning as an international search authority and an international preliminary examining authority under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). Since the World Intellectual Property Organisation decided to appoint Israel, the Patent Office has made substantial efforts to meet the necessary PCT requirements.

23 May 2012

Further to a 2010 agreement with the US Trade Commission, the Israeli government is finalising an amendment to the Patent Law. The agreement has resulted in the removal of Israel from the blacklist of countries that fail to protect copyright adequately and enabled Israel to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Under the amendment, Israeli applications will publish 18 months after the filing or priority date, as in most Western countries.

02 May 2012

The Israeli patent registrar has issued new guidelines to determine patentable inventions by clarifying the definition of "technological invention", as defined by Section 3 of the Patent Law. The long-awaited guidelines clarify the Israeli approach regarding software inventions in an attempt to make all Israeli examinations consistent.

21 March 2012

In May 2010 then Deputy Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks Noah Shalev Shlomovits ruled that Eva cigarettes, produced by Aktsionerno Droujestvo Bulgartabac Holdings in Bulgaria, were not confusingly similar to Eve cigarettes, produced by Philip Morris. The Supreme Court recently ruled on Philip Morris's appeal of this decision.

21 December 2011

For the past 50 years jeans manufacturer Wrangler Apparel Corp has used a W-shaped stitched pattern on the back pockets of its products. Israeli jeans manufacturer Crocker decorated the back pockets of its jeans with design that is arguably a W shape. As a result, Wrangler sued Crocker for, among other things, registered trademark infringement and passing off.

07 December 2011

The World Intellectual Property Organisation and Ono Academic College, Israel, have sponsored a three-day conference on traditional knowledge. "Traditional knowledge" generally refers to folk knowledge, folk medicine and the cultural expressions of regional, indigenous or local communities. However, it also covers the possible property rights of indigenous peoples in unique genetic resources found in plants and animals from their locale.

23 November 2011

In a case of alleged copyright infringement committed through the bundling of foreign television channels, Judge Esther Shtemer recently awarded the substantial sum of NIS19 million in damages. Referring to the Supreme Court's decision in <i>Tele-Event</i>, she held that retransmission constituted copyright infringement.

12 October 2011

In a case relating to the download of copyright-protected films, Judge Ofer Grosskopf recently ruled that supporting and displaying lists of links to films was not in itself a culpable act of infringement. He held that provided that an internet service provider has a removal on request policy, it is not culpable for acts of infringement resulting from such links.

05 October 2011