A product appears on a manufacturer’s website, is presented at a trade fair or is offered to distributors before an Israeli design application has been filed. Israel’s Designs Law, 5777-2017, provides a 12-month grace period for certain disclosures originating with the design owner. An application filed after a product launch can therefore remain eligible for registration.
For overseas manufacturers and their design counsel, the central issues are the date of first public disclosure, the source of the disclosed information, the appearance actually shown and the filing dates in the relevant jurisdictions. The Israeli filing also carries a specific obligation to report qualifying pre-filing disclosures to the Patent Office.
What Constitutes Public Disclosure Under Israeli Design Law?
Public disclosure can occur through publication of the design itself, distribution of products bearing it or offering such products for sale. A public website, social-media post, commercial catalogue, e-commerce listing or exhibition can disclose a design before the first completed sale.
The visual content of the disclosure matters. A photograph showing only one side of a product may contain different information from a full set of views. For the relevant novelty and individual-character analysis, counsel should preserve the actual publication and identify the visual characteristics available to the public on that date.
Confidential Presentations to Manufacturers and Investors
Section 8 of the Designs Law addresses disclosures made under confidentiality. Presentation by the proprietor to another person who expressly or impliedly agrees not to disclose the design is treated differently from making the appearance available to the public.
International manufacturers commonly share prototypes with production facilities, investors and distributors before a product launch. Written confidentiality agreements, dated presentation files and records identifying the recipients provide the evidentiary basis for establishing the circumstances of those disclosures.
A documented confidential presentation can allow the company to proceed with development and manufacturing discussions while preserving the distinction between internal commercial disclosure and public launch.
Section 9: The 12-Month Design Grace Period
Section 9 provides that a disclosure during the 12 months preceding the relevant date will be disregarded for eligibility as a registered design where the statutory conditions are met. The provision covers disclosure by the proprietor and disclosure resulting from information originating with the proprietor, whether that information was obtained lawfully or unlawfully.
For example, if a manufacturer first publishes a product on its website and submits an Israeli design application eight months later, that earlier proprietor-derived publication may fall within Section 9. The eligibility assessment must still address the novelty and individual character of the claimed design in light of other relevant earlier disclosures.
For deadline planning, the material date is the first relevant publication, not necessarily the opening of sales or the most recent marketing campaign. Later reposting of the same design does not restart the period triggered by its initial qualifying disclosure.
When a Distributor or Third Party Publishes the Design
Section 9 also addresses disclosure resulting from information originating with the design proprietor. A distributor may publish images supplied by the owner, or a third party may disclose product information obtained without authority. The provenance of the information is central to applying the provision.
Independent prior disclosure of a design by a separate creator presents a different issue. The applicant should establish who developed the relevant appearance, what was supplied to others and how each publication arose.
Useful records include the first CAD files and design sketches, emails transmitting the images, supplier presentations, website histories and copies of the actual third-party publication.
Israeli Decisions: Chanel and Pfizer, and Yanai R.D.I.
In the Israeli Patent Office’s Chanel and Pfizer decision of 31 May 2020, the grace-period provisions were applied in circumstances involving disclosures made before the 2017 Designs Law came into force and applications filed under the new Law. The decision also considered third-party publication stemming from information originating with the proprietor.
In a separate decision concerning Yanai R.D.I. (13 December 2020), Section 9 was applied to a disclosure made by a person recognized at the time as the previous owner of the design. The subsequent history of that dispute is relevant: in 2024, the two design registrations were cancelled in separate proceedings.
These administrative decisions illustrate the practical importance of documenting how a public disclosure originated. They also show the value of preserving ownership and development records when a design passes between businesses.
Disclosure Must Be Reported Under Regulation 27
Regulation 27 of the Israeli Designs Regulations, 5779-2019, requires the applicant to inform the competent authority in writing when filing about public disclosure of the design during the preceding 12 months that falls within Section 9.
The application preparation should therefore include a disclosure chronology with dated website pages, social-media posts, catalogues, exhibition materials and documents identifying the person responsible for publication. These records help establish the basis for applying the grace period if an examiner cites the proprietor’s earlier publication.
Coordination between foreign counsel and the Israeli filing attorney should cover this information during the initial instructions, alongside priority details, ownership and the design representations.
What if More Than 12 Months Have Passed?
Once more than 12 months have elapsed since the relevant proprietor-derived public disclosure, the original publication can defeat novelty under the Designs Law. The factual analysis then focuses on whether the early exposure was genuinely public, whether confidentiality applied, which appearance was disclosed and how it compares with the design now proposed for registration.
Where the product has been materially redesigned, the revised appearance requires its own novelty and individual-character analysis. The relevant evidence is the earlier published version alongside the later application drawings.
Unregistered Design Protection After Launch
Israel also protects qualifying unregistered designs. Under Sections 4, 61 and 65, the regime requires, among other things, the relevant connection to commercial offering or public distribution in Israel and provides a three-year protection period from the relevant date.
Unregistered protection concerns copying and the activities and knowledge conditions specified by the Law. It is commercially useful for some products with a short sales life, while registration provides a defined and longer-term right.
Section 64 addresses the relationship between the unregistered-design regime and filing for registration. The three-year unregistered protection period does not extend the separate 12-month registration window. For enforcement issues see Unregistered Design Infringement in Israel.
The Israeli Grace Period and International Design Priority
The 12-month grace period under Israeli law and the six-month priority period under the Paris Convention are separate mechanisms. The former concerns qualifying disclosures affecting eligibility in Israel; the latter concerns claims to the date of a first qualifying application when filing corresponding applications in other countries.
For an international product launch, the publication chronology and the application chronology should be prepared together. A design publicly shown before any filing may have different consequences in the target jurisdictions. Israeli filings may be coordinated with direct national applications and the Hague international design system where the relevant countries are designated.
Preparing an Israeli Filing After a Product Launch
When a product has already been shown, counsel should establish the earliest public appearance, collect the exact images or product samples disclosed and identify who created and distributed the material. Confidential presentations should be documented separately from public advertising.
Next, compare the publicly disclosed appearance with the proposed filing drawings, determine whether Section 9 applies and prepare the notification required by Regulation 27. Review any earlier third-party designs that may affect novelty or individual character and coordinate foreign filing dates with the commercial launch plan.
The filing representations should identify the design that the company intends to protect rather than merely repeat a marketing image with unsuitable lighting, background objects or incomplete views.
For local filing requirements and representation by Israeli counsel, see Design Registration and Prosecution in Israel. Related guides address unregistered-design protection and registered fashion designs, where timing around public launches is particularly significant.
Further discussion of public disclosure and grace periods appears in Yonatan Drori and Yotam Werzansky-Orland, Designs and Industrial Designs Law (Hebrew, 2nd ed., 2019), Chapter 6, Sections 6.1.1.9, 6.1.4.3–6.1.4.4 and 6.2.2, and Chapter 5 concerning unregistered designs.
