ISRAEL: An Introduction to Intellectual Property
Israel’s Landscape in 2024–2025: Adjustment, Adaptation and Structural Resilience
The 2024 Annual Report of the Israel Patent Officeshows that intellectual property activity across patents, designs and trade marks rebalanced during the period, broadly in line with global trends. Some rights holders, particularly foreign applicants, streamlined their filing programmes and focused on core assets, while Israeli applicants maintained, and in several sectors increased, their use of the IP system. Following the events of 7 October and the subsequent conflict, the IP framework remained stable and fully operational. Growth slowed, volatility rose and uncertainty deepened – yet the innovation engine that drives a large share of Israel’s GDP and exports proved more resilient than many had expected.
A Strategic Adaptation in Patent Filings
Patent activity saw a notable adjustment in 2024. Total patent filings declined by approximately 10.7% compared with 2023, with shifts appearing across all technological fields, including life sciences and chemistry – sectors that traditionally dominate application volumes. The trend was more pronounced among foreign applicants. In contrast, first filings by Israeli applicants increased by about 6.5%, supported largely by increased use of the Patent Office’s fast-track examination route (“on-the-spot examination”).
The shift toward accelerated procedures reflected applicants’ strategic choice to prioritise faster and more predictable pathways.
Internationally, Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) filings originating from Israel reached 1,245 in 2024 – a 7.2% year-on-year recalibration amidst a complex global environment. This reflected a more selective approach among Israeli applicants to pursue international protection in a time of careful budgeting. Nonetheless, academic institutions remained consistent contributors to international filings, underscoring the depth of Israel’s research base.
Designs and Trade Marks: Strategic Focus and Operational Excellence
Design registrations demonstrated a measured adjustmentby roughly 7.5% in 2024. Notably, while direct filings shifted, international designations under the Hague System showed continued resilience and growth. This trend highlights the ongoing appeal of streamlined international mechanisms for rights holders navigating the current landscape.
Trade mark application volumes experienced a recalibration of approximately 10%. While some foreign and local applicants adopted a more selective filing strategy – leading to a further adjustment in international applications designating Israel – the overall market health remains robust.
A key indicator of this strength is the stability of renewal rates; the fact that cancellation rates for non-payment remained steady underscores sustained long-term confidence in the Israeli marketplace. Furthermore, the Trade Mark Office successfully utilised this period to further enhance service standards and transparency, ensuring a more efficient and user-friendly examination process for all participants.
Economic and Policy Context: Resilience Under Stress
Despite the pressures of a wartime economy, Israel’s innovation ecosystem demonstrated notable resilience throughout 2024–2025. After a sharp downturn in 2022–2023, fundraising by Israeli technology companies increased meaningfully in 2024 and remained stable into 2025. Growth was especially strong in IP-intensive sectors such as cybersecurity, defence-related technologies, artificial intelligence, infrastructure software and healthtech. Investors continued to price Israeli technology risk, but with significantly heightened selectivity. Increasingly, they emphasised the strength and clarity of companies’ IP portfolios as core determinants of valuation and investment decisions.
Throughout 2024–2025, government policy focused on reinforcing – rather than redefining – the strategic link between intellectual property and the real economy. The Angels Law, enacted shortly before the war in Gaza, continued to offer tax incentives for investors in early-stage technology companies and certain acquirers, conditioned on the intellectual property and substantial operations remaining in Israel. In parallel, the longstanding regime for preferred technology enterprises, which grants reduced corporate tax rates to companies maintaining significant R&D and IP activity domestically, remained central to how multinational corporations structured their Israeli operations.
The Israel Innovation Authority played an expanded role during this period, redirecting and expanding grant programmes targeting deep-tech, climate-tech and human capital. These programmes were designed to help early-stage companies bridge a more difficult fundraising environment and to preserve technological capabilities that might otherwise erode during prolonged instability.
Taken together, these policy instruments shared a unified objective: to keep high-value R&D and the associated intellectual property anchored in Israel, and to support companies that treat IP not as a legal formality but as a core productive asset.
Conclusion: A Challenging But Enduring Innovation Economy
The combined data portray a complex picture. On one hand, 2024 witnessed a pronounced reduction in IP filings, reflecting economic pressure, wartime disruptions, investor caution and global headwinds. On the other hand, the innovation economy – which constitutes a significant portion of Israel’s GDP and export capacity – proved far more durable than anticipated. The academic sector maintained strong output, investment stabilised following earlier contraction, and accelerated patent procedures gained traction. Policy measures remained aligned with retaining IP creation within Israel, even in a constrained environment.
As Israel enters 2026, it does so with an innovation ecosystem that has endured considerable stress yet continues to act as a vital engine of economic value – even as the protection, commercialisation and international expansion of IP have become more challenging. At the same time, macroeconomic forecasts from the Bank of Israel, the IMF and the OECD point to moderate recovery in 2025–2026, with expected GDP growth outpacing the near-stagnation of 2024. The anticipated rebound in high-tech investment – especially in IP-intensive fields such as cybersecurity, AI, advanced manufacturing, digital health and semiconductors – is likely to drive a corresponding rise in IP activity. If these trends continue, Israel may see a measured recovery in patent filings, design registrations and trade mark applications, re-establishing intellectual property as both a barometer and a driver of long-term economic resilience.