ISRAEL Law and Practice Contributed by: Dan Or-Hof, Eran Gandman, Netanel Aharon and Matan Adar, Or-Hof Law
Admissibility criteria and thresholds A court may approve a class action if the following cumulative conditions are met at the preliminary stage. • Personal cause of action: The representative plain - tiff must demonstrate a direct claim; “non-user” classes have been rejected ( Greenblat v Meta ). • Commonality: Substantial common legal or factual questions. • Reasonable possibility of success: A prima facie merits assessment. • Efficiency and fairness: The class action must be the most appropriate procedural vehicle. • Adequacy of representation: Good faith and com - petent representation. Procedure and indicative timelines • Phase I – Certification: Typically decisive; respond - ents have 90 days to respond, and proceedings may last several years. • Phase II – Merits: If certified, the case proceeds to trial, though most cases are settled or dismissed earlier. Typical relief and statutory damages Courts may award monetary compensation (individual or aggregate), statutory damages under Section 29A of the PPL without proof of harm, cy-près relief via the Class Actions Fund, and injunctive remedies. Recent developments: privacy and AI contexts Amendment No 13 strengthened privacy-based class actions, while recent case law confirms that web scraping alone does not establish a consumer rela - tionship ( OpenAI v Haim Barak Cohen (2025)). A pro - posed 2026 amendment seeks to curb abusive filings through pre-action notice mechanisms. 3. Requirements for the Protection and Processing of Non-Personal Data 3.1 Objectives and Scope of Data Regulation As of 2026, regulation remains centred on the PPL, but emerging legislative initiatives increasingly address the broader data economy, drawing inspiration from the EU’s digital strategy.
Statutory Scope: The “Reasonable Identifiability” Test The core principle remains that data is regulated under the PPL only if it relates to an “identified” or “reason - ably identifiable” natural person. • Anonymised data: Under the 2025 PPA Guidelines on Anonymization, data stripped of identifiers falls outside the PPL where re-identification would not be possible with reasonable effort, considering available technology and auxiliary datasets. • Corporate and industrial data: Purely machine-gen - erated data (eg, industrial telemetry) and internal business data are generally excluded from the PPL and are governed by the Trade Secrets Law, 5759- Israel has no horizontal equivalent to the EU Data Act and data-sharing obligations are sector-specific: • The financial sector (open banking) – The Financial Information Service Law, 5782-2021, mandates data sharing with licensed third parties at the user’s request, covering personal data and certain non- personal elements such as pricing and product metadata. • The health sector (information mobility) – The Health Information Mobility Law, 5784-2024, facili - tates data exchange between healthcare providers and standardises interoperability, including adop - tion of the FHIR standard. The 2026 Digital and AI Reform: Towards a “Data Act” A proposed 2026 reform package mirrors elements of the EU Data Act and AI Act, including: • clarification of access and sharing rights in data generated by connected products; • safeguards permitting refusal of data sharing where trade secrets are at risk; and • cloud portability obligations aimed at reducing vendor lock-in. Interaction With Cloud and IoT Cloud and IoT regulation is shaped by PPA directives and IoT security guidelines. The framework distin - 1999, and contractual arrangements. Sectoral Data-Sharing Frameworks
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