ISRAEL IP

In a recent decision, the Vice Israeli Trademark Commissioner ruled that the mark “Berliner” will not be allowed for registration, as it may confuse customers to believe that the source of the merchendize is Berlin.

On February 2006, D-Card Ltd. filed a trademark application on the mark “A diamond in your pocket” in relation to a card with small gems. The product enables the customer to buy a very small diamond and wonder around, carrying a diamond in his pocket.
The trademark examiner refused to allow the mark, arguing that the [...]

In an interesting trademark ruling, the Israeli PTO made it clear that evidence in reply should be strictly in reply to the other party’s evidence.
It was clearly noted that each party must file all his evidence in the first “round” and not wait for the other party to file his evidence and use the “evidence [...]

Another extremely important decision in the same case related to the manner in which evidence should be filed to the commissioner in terms of proper languages.
It was ruled that any evidence filed to the commissioner should be filed in Hebrew or Arabic, the official language.
Affidavits will be accepted, if there is a good reason to [...]

An interesting fact which is revealed when analyzing the statistics provided by the Israeli PTO is that most of the trademark applications filed in Israel are filed by non-Israeli applicants.  Here are the leading countries:
Israel - 32% of the applications
USA - 25% of the applications
Germany - 8%
Switzerland - 7%
France - 6%
England - 4%
Italy - 3%
Sweeden, [...]

Israeli Trademark Journal of January 2009 is now published. It is available in this link:

http://www.trademarks.justice.gov.il/trademarkswebsiteui/trademarksJournal/TMTMJournal_9_2_2009_13_42.pdf