ISRAEL Law and Practice Contributed by: Eran Bareket, Reinhold Cohn Group
The Registrar has the discretion to partially revoke the patent by narrowing, or revoking, part of the patent claims. 4.3 Amendments in Revocation/ Cancellation Proceedings The patentee may apply for an amendment dur- ing revocation proceedings for the purposes of clarification, removing an error in the specifica- tion or restricting the claims. The Registrar will permit the amendment if they are convinced that the amendment will not broaden the scope of the claims and will not add anything to the speci- fication not already included. 4.4 Revocation/Cancellation and Infringement Unlike Germany, for example, infringement and validity arguments (in infringement litigation) are heard before the same court. In terms of proce- dure, the issue of damages is bifurcated. At the first stage, the court addresses issues of valid- ity and infringement, with the judgment at this stage addressing the grant of an injunction and usually an order for accounting. At the second stage – the bifurcated damages proceeding – the parties conduct a trial over the accounting and calculation of damages. The parties usually settle the dispute during this proceeding and do not conduct it in its entirety. 5. Trial and Settlement 5.1 Special Procedural Provisions for Intellectual Property Rights There are no special procedural provisions for intellectual property rights proceedings. See 2.11 Initial Pleading Standards .
In terms of procedure, the issue of damages is often bifurcated. See 4.4 Revocation/Cancella-
tion and Infringement . 5.2 Decision-Makers
Infringement cases are heard before profes- sional judges possessing a legal background; there are neither technical judges nor juries in Israel. There are also no specialised intellectual property judges. The parties have no influence on the allocation of their presiding judge. 5.3 Settling the Case The parties may resolve the dispute via media- tion (which is regulated by law). Mediation is voluntary and, even though the judges usually encourage the parties to resolve the dispute using mediation, currently there is no mandatory settlement conference. The court may also, with the parties’ consent, refer the case to arbitration. 5.4 Other Court Proceedings If an application for revocation is filed with the Patent Office after a patent infringement action has been initiated before a district court, the Pat- ent Office will not hear that application unless the court permits it. Where a patent infringement action has been initiated before the district court, when a revo- cation application is already pending before the Patent Office, the court has the power to stay the proceedings before the Patent Office. The court trying an infringement action may also stay the proceedings before it, pending resolution of a revocation action before the Pat- ent Office (judges may sometimes encourage the parties to first resolve the validity issue by instituting a revocation action before the Patent Office).
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