Source: https://www.iliplaw.com/americaisrael_patent_law/17c/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 09:17:17+00:00

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We’ve blogged before about modified examination in Israel under section 17(c) of the statute. Per §17(c), if a corresponding patent is granted in certain other jurisdictions, one can gain a quick allowance in Israel by amending the claims so that they’re identical to the ones granted elsewhere, and requesting allowance under §17(c). This provision was added to the statute in 1995, following several years as policy adopted by the ILPTO to reduce its backlog.
§17(c)(1)(a) and §17(c)(1)(b) are easy enough to understand: the IL application claims priority directly from the parallel application, or vice versa. Probably the most common situation, however, is that of §17(c)(1)(c), where the IL application and the parallel patent share a common priority claim. For example, the Applicant files a US provisional, then files a PCT claiming priority from the provisional, then enters the national phase in Israel and the USA (or Europe). The US (or EPO) patent is granted. Since both the IL and US (or EPO) cases claim priority from a common predecessor application (the provisional) filed in a WTO country (the USA), the condition of §17(c)(1)(c) is met. So if the claims in Israel are amended to be identical to those of the US (or EPO) patent, allowance under §17(c) can be requested.
Now let’s complicate things a bit. Suppose that there are two US provisionals, and the PCT claims priority from both provisionals, as do the national phase applications in the EPO and in Israel. Does this make a difference? As a practical matter, no: the ILPTO will normally grant the §17(c) request on the basis of the granted EP. And this seems eminently reasonable: since the two cases both derived from the same PCT, and share the same priority claims, they should be regarded as corresponding (or “parallel”) applications.
Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that nothing in §17(c)(1)(c) says that all the priority claims between the parallel application and the Israel application must be held in common. It merely says that there needs to be a common priority claim. Let’s suppose, therefore that in the case of the two provisionals serving as priority applications, the parallel patent is a US patent that was filed as a national phase of the PCT. But let’s also suppose that, for some reason, in the US the applicant decided to forego the priority/benefit claim to the earlier provisional. Should that change the calculus for §17(c) in Israel? I would think not, since it means the US application was actually exposed to a larger group of prior publications than if the claim to the earlier provisional had been maintained, and, strictly speaking, the condition of §17(c)(1)(c) has been fulfilled. Would it matter if it was the second provisional the benefit of which was waived in the US national phase case? Again, presumably not, since here too the US application would have potentially subject to a larger group of prior publications than if the claim to the later provisional had been maintained, and, strictly speaking, the condition of §17(c)(1)(c) has been fulfilled – there’s a common priority claim between the US and Israel cases.
But now let’s suppose that it’s the Israel application that forswears one of the priority claims. Now what? Logic would suggest that, in the absence of one of the common priority claims, it’s now the Israel application that’s potentially exposed to a larger group of prior publications, and therefore the grant of a US (or EP) patent that includes two priority claims cannot presumptively mean that the IL claims are also allowable. But that’s not what the statute actually says: all that’s required, per the statute, is one common, valid priority claim.
Another question arises with respect to the situation where both §17(c)(1)(a) and §17(c)(1)(c) are applicable. Suppose that a US provisional is filed, then six months later a US non-provisional is filed claiming the benefit of the provisional, and within a year of the provisional filing an IL application is filed claiming priority from both. The US case is granted. Whither the IL case under §17(c)? The two applications share a common priority per §17(c)(1)(c) (viz., the provisional), and the IL case claims priority directly from the US case that’s now been granted, in accordance with 17(c)(1)(a).
The ILPTO’s view, as set forth in its examination guidelines, is that it’s not necessary for the Israel application and the foreign patent to share ALL priority claims, but the claimed invention must be supported by the disclosure of the common priority document. So in the situation where both §17(c)(1)(a) and §17(c)(1)(c) are applicable , the ILPTO will probably grant the §17(c) request. Although I suppose that if one wishes to split hairs, it could be argued that, by the letter of the statute, this wouldn’t be an acceptable application of §17(c)…but I’m not going to explain here why that might be so.
One can imagine even more complicated fact patterns in which questions about the applicability of §17(c) may arise. Suppose, for example, that Applicant files provisional 1, then a PCT claiming priority from that provisional, then a US national phase application from the PCT, then a second provisional, then both a US CIP that claims the benefit of everything that went before it, and an Israel application that claims priority from prov 2 and the CIP. The CIP is granted, and the claims in Israel are amended to correspond to those of the granted CIP. The chart below shows the relationships. The question is, Can §17(c) be invoked here?
Seems to me that the answer is a definite “Maybe” - it depends on the particular facts. But the good news is that, per the ILPTO’s examination guidelines, the situation does not per se preclude §17(c) treatment.
Lots of verbiage was spent in the run-up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Myriad Genetics decision last week, lots has already been spent since the decision, and lots more will be spent in the coming weeks. To call the decision “reasoned” or “logical” is kind of like Vezzini’s use of the word “inconceivable” in the Princess Bride.
But my intent here isn’t to rant on the SCOTUS, although I may do that in a separate post. Rather, one of the things that interests me is the potential impact of the Myriad decision on patents in Israel, in two respects.
The first thing I wonder about is its impact on gene patents generally. Hitherto, Israel has subscribed to the notion that isolated DNA is not a product of nature and is therefore patent-eligible. One wonders to what extent, if any, the ILPTO or courts here will be influenced by the SCOTUS decision, and if Israel will reverse course with respect to isolated DNA.
If the patent system here were to change tack, the mechanism by which it would have to do so would need to be slightly different than that enunciated so obfuscatorily by SCOTUS. That’s because there is no patent-eligibility bar to products of nature per se (except for plants and animals, which are barred from patent eligibility under section 7 on moral grounds). Rather, section 3 of the Israel statute, which defines patentable (and by extension, patent-eligible) inventions, simply says “An invention, whether a product or process in any technical field, which is new, useful, susceptible of industrial use and inventive – is a patentable invention.” Israel law thus generally denies patentability to products of nature on lack of novelty grounds. And asserting that isolated DNA already exists in nature is something I don’t foresee the examining corps at the ILPTO doing – as scientists they’re too sophisticated to be duped by PUBPAT-type hand-waving into buying into that.
17(d): The Commissioner, as well as the Chief Examiner and his Deputy, are at liberty not to accept the application [for which allowance under 17(c) has been sought], if they determined on the basis of material at their disposal or which was brought to their attention during the course of examination, that the application does not fulfill the requirements detailed in subsection (c) [viz. 17(c)] or if there is another special reason not to accept the application.
17(e): If proceedings for the cancellation of the corresponding foreign patent or opposing the grant of the corresponding foreign patent are ongoing, the applicant shall notify the Commissioner, no later than the date of the grant of the patent in Israel.
These sections are somewhat murky anyway – as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, what constitutes “special circumstances” in 17(d), and the effect of reporting under 17(e) as well the penalty for non-reporting under 17(e), are unclear – and prima facie they have no effect on issued patents. 17(e), for example, only imposes a requirement to report proceedings against the corresponding foreign patent up until the grant of the Israel patent, not after grant in Israel. On the other hand, logic dictates that if the corresponding patent on which a 17(c) request was granted was itself invalidated on substantive grounds, at the very least the Israel court or the ILPTO during cancellation proceedings would need to revisit the question of substantive patentability of the Israel patent.
Regarding 17(d), it’s worth mentioning that the ILPTO’s examination guidelines (last updated December 9, 2012) state that if the corresponding foreign application is from a country that has a grace period – e.g. the USA prior to the Asinine Inventorship Assault – then the Israel examiner must look to see if the invention was published during the grace period, since such publication would not have been cited abroad but is citable in Israel; and if such publication took place, the Office applies 17(d) to refuse the 17(c) request and raise a novelty and/or inventive step rejection. But no word on what might constitute “another special reason” to refuse the 17(c) request. Would withdrawal from issue by the USPTO following the Myriad decision constitute such a “special reason”?
As to 17(e), the statute doesn’t say what happens to the Israel application if opposition or cancellation proceedings against the foreign patent are reported, but the examination guidelines instruct examiners to look for such proceedings (even though it is the applicant’s duty to report such) and if such proceedings are found, to move the application from 17(c) examination to regular examination and examine the application for novelty, inventive step etc.
The Myriad decision effectively means that all claims in US patents to DNA sequences isolated from natural sources are invalid and thus unenforceable. But in the Israel context, two things should be noted. First, those US claims were examined and found to be novel and non-obvious. If one is willing to accept – as Israel law presently does – that isolated DNA, as opposed to cellular DNA, is not found in nature, then under Israel law that isolated DNA needs to be examined for novelty (did someone else isolate it first?) and inventive step, which in the case of 17(c)-allowed Israel patents already occurred abroad. So the effective invalidation of the US patent upon which an isolated DNA claim in Israel was allowed should not impugn the 17(c) allowance retroactively.
Second, it should be stressed that the US claims are effectively invalidated, but not formally invalidated. As a formal matter, by statute those US claims are still presumed valid until challenged. Following Myriad, we won’t be seeing attempts to enforce those claims, because that would open the door to such challenges being made by defendants, and such challenges are now trivial to make; but technically every one of those claims is valid until a court points to a specific claim and says it’s not valid because it’s directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. In which case there’s even less basis for asserting the claims in Israel should be shot down because of the Myriad decision, since at present there are no isolated DNA claims granted under 17(c) in Israel whose corresponding US claims have been invalidated per Myriad.
Much hay was made in Israel last fall when WIPO decided to allow the Israel PTO to try to become a PCT search and examination authority. At the time, the Commissioner of Patents sent out a letter in Hebrew to the ILPTO email list (click here for translation by yours truly) explaining the goings-on that occurred in Geneva leading up to the decision. The local press picked up the story as well, in most cases inaccurately reporting that this meant that Israelis could now file PCT applications. (Actually, the Israel PTO has been a PCT receiving office since 1996.) One firm whose partners are known to be publicity hounds even finagled an interview on one of the television news programs to explain the importance of WIPO’s decision.
Other than that instance of shameless self-promotion, I suspect that much of the hullabaloo was less self-aggrandizement and more of the Sally Field “You like me, you really like me” variety: given the hypocrisy and immorality to which Israel is constantly subjected to at the UN and other international fora, it was nice to receive some positive recognition for a change, from a UN body no less.
Even then, with the decision there was a reminder that politics always plays a role in these sorts of decisions. As explained in the Commissioner’s letter to the Israel patent community, part of the quid quo pro for extending the invitation to Israel was that Egypt would also be given the opportunity to become an ISA.
What a joke. Comparing the Egyptian Patent Office to the ILPTO is like comparing a 1971 Dodge Dart to a 2010 Cadillac. As statistics available on the Egypt PO and the ILPTO websites attest, the Israel PTO has far more examination experience, fielding roughly 3.5 times more applications annually than the Egyptian PO. The just-published PCT Yearly Review also has some interesting statistics in this regard as well. But the Egyptian PO is, evidently, the best the Arab world has to offer, and the Arab world wasn’t going to acquiesce to Israel’s entry into the ranks of PCT search authorities without one of its own being afforded the same opportunity.
Setting the politics of the decision aside, the WIPO decision represents several opportunities for the ILPTO. First, it’s an opportunity for the ILPTO to move into ranks of the world’s first-rate patent offices, instead of continuing to operate, as one local practitioner puts it, as a 19th century patent office in a country with 21st century technology. Israel’s greatest natural resource is it brainpower, and in that regard the examining corps at the ILPTO has the potential to be one of the best in the world. It’s much harder to gain university admission in Israel than it is in, say, the USA, and as a consequence Israeli university graduates tend to be better educated, on average, than their American counterparts. Because many Israelis were themselves born abroad, or are the children of immigrants, particularly from the former Soviet Union, many Israeli examiners have facility in English and Russian or other European languages, which can enhance their search abilities.
But in addition, if the ILPTO becomes and ISA/IPEA, it could simultaneously contribute to the reduction in the backlog at the USPTO and elsewhere, reduce costs for applicants, and increase its own revenues. How so?
First, the ILPTO allows the filing of applications in English, which opens up the possibility of becoming a search authority for PCT applications filed in other jurisdictions, most notably the USA and the EPO. Couple that with the fact that ILPTO examiners cost less to employ than their counterparts at the USPTO or the EPO, and the ILPTO could potentially be an attractive search option for applicants from other countries, just as US applicants have in recent years begun using the Korean Patent Office to conduct PCT searches, partly because of the lower cost vis-à-vis the USPTO, and partly because of the timeliness with which KPO searches are delivered (as opposed PCT searches conducted in the USA, which are generally of low quality and not infrequently delivered after the 30-month national phase deadline has passed).
There are two steps the ILPTO needs to take to make this happen. First, it needs to improve the quality of its examination and reporting. Some ILPTO examiners are already world-class. They find the most relevant art, and they clearly explain how it applies to the claims. But there are still a significant number who continue to practice, or worse, are being trained, to do a poor job: they don’t find the best prior art, or they mis-apply the art that they find, or rather than explain how the art they’ve found applies to each claim, they produce a one-liner along the lines of, “The claims are obvious in view of publication X”. This has to be remedied, so that all of the examiners consistently produce first-rate work. Fortunately, it’s an attainable goal.
The second step involves getting other patent offices to recognize the searches done at the ILPTO. This is where politics re-enters the picture. Because no one, not even an Israeli applicant, is going to want to use the ILPTO to search if that search doesn’t have some cachet outside of Israel. Israel needs to get on board with the US patent prosecution highway, and with other countries that have similar arrangements. While the PPH leaves much to be desired, these days anything that can help an applicant for a US patent decrease application pendency and increase the likelihood of allowance is going to warrant a close look from US-based applicants, particularly if it can help the applicant reduce its costs.
I believe that the current Commissioner appreciates, at least in some respects, the need to make nice with the decision-makers in other patent offices and to come to agreements with them regarding searches and examinations done in Israel. He said as much in his letter referred to above. In the six months or so he has left in office, this would be a good thing for him to concentrate on, and his successor would also do well to make it a priority.

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