Quick Answer: Copyright, patents, and trademarks are part of an Israeli estate and pass to heirs under the Inheritance Law 5725-1965 the same way a bank account does. Copyright vests automatically in the heirs under Section 34 of the Copyright Law 5768-2007, requires no registration, and runs 70 years past the creator's death. Patents and trademarks also transfer by succession, but the heir must file a transfer application with the Israel Patent Authority to record the change and keep the right alive. A succession order or probate order from the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs is the starting point for all three.

Most heirs look for bank accounts, apartments, and pension funds. Intellectual property rarely makes anyone's list, yet it can turn out to be the most commercially significant thing in the estate: a royalty stream from a published novel, a patent a technology company is paying licence fees on, a brand a business partner quietly kept trading under after the owner died. Families managing an Israeli estate from abroad miss these assets more often than not.

The Israel Patent Authority (Rashut HaPatentim, ืจืฉื•ืช ื”ืคื˜ื ื˜ื™ื) runs the patent, trademark, and design registries. Copyright is not registered anywhere in Israel โ€” it vests the moment a work is created. The main collecting society, ACUM, holds its own member records, but it is not a public registry. None of these bodies automatically learns when a rights holder dies. The heirs have to come to them, and if they do not come promptly, they lose income and, with patents, can lose the right entirely when renewal fees go unpaid.

1. Intellectual property as an estate asset

The Inheritance Law 5725-1965 governs who inherits and in what shares. It says nothing specific about IP, because it does not need to. IP rights are personal property under Israeli law, and personal property passes into the estate unless a specific statute says otherwise. None does. Section 34 of the Copyright Law 5768-2007 makes the point explicitly for copyright. For patents, Section 53 of the Patents Law 5727-1967 confirms that a patent is personal property capable of transmission by operation of law. For trademarks, the Trade Marks Ordinance [New Version] 5732-1972 treats registered marks as assignable property, which includes assignment by succession.

An Israeli copyright, patent, or trademark sits in the estate alongside the apartment and the bank account. It passes to heirs in the same proportions, through the same process, on the same timeline โ€” will governs if there is one, intestate rules in Sections 10-16 of the Inheritance Law if there is not.

The category heirs miss most often is rights that carry no certificate. Copyright requires no registration in Israel. If your parent published novels, scored a film, or built a software product, they held copyright in those works from the moment of creation. There is nothing to find in a filing cabinet. The rights exist regardless, and they are now yours.

Under Section 38 of the Copyright Law 5768-2007, copyright runs 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author died. Where a work has multiple authors, the clock starts at the end of the year the last surviving author dies. Israel is a Berne Convention signatory, so this term applies to Israeli and foreign creators alike when their works are protected here.

Put that in real terms. A novel written in the 1980s by someone who died in 2026 stays under copyright until 2096. The heirs who receive it today โ€” or their own children after them โ€” can collect royalties, grant licences, and sue infringers for the next 70 years. ACUM distributes hundreds of millions of shekels annually; a portion flows regularly to estates of deceased members whose heirs have notified the society.

No registration is needed to acquire the copyright. Under Section 34, it passes by succession at the moment of death. What the heir does need to do is notify whoever pays royalties โ€” a collecting society, a publisher, a licensee โ€” so those payments are redirected. Every such notification requires a succession order or probate order as proof of entitlement.

In Practice โ€” ACUM membership transfer after the creator's death: ACUM (Agudat Compositorim, Mechabrim u-Motzei Israel, the Israeli Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers) manages performance, broadcast, and reproduction rights for musical and literary works in Israel. If the deceased was an ACUM member, royalties from radio broadcasts, streaming services, live performances, and background music licences were flowing to their account. To redirect those payments to the estate and then to heirs, submit to ACUM's membership department: (1) the original succession order or certified copy, (2) a death certificate with apostille or certified translation, and (3) identification for all heirs. ACUM will transfer the membership to the estate account and, once the estate is distributed, recognise the new rights holders. The succession order required for this step costs approximately NIS 507 filed online at the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs, plus a publication fee of approximately NIS 66. Processing at the Registrar typically takes 3 to 5 months from filing to order, then a further 2 to 4 weeks for ACUM to update its records.

3. Moral rights after the author's death

Israeli copyright law distinguishes between economic rights (the right to licence and receive royalties) and moral rights (the right of attribution and the right of integrity). Under Section 46 of the Copyright Law 5768-2007, an author has the right to be named as the creator of their work and the right to object to treatment that amounts to derogatory alteration prejudicial to their honour or reputation. Under Section 47, these moral rights pass to the heirs and can be exercised for the full copyright term.

In concrete terms: heirs can object if a publisher reissues the deceased's novel without attribution, if a technology company strips the author credit from their software, or if a streaming service edits a musical composition in a way the family considers demeaning. Moral rights enforcement is a civil claim โ€” brought in the Economic Affairs Court or the District Court under Section 56 of the Copyright Law โ€” and can result in an injunction, a correction, or damages. It runs separately from ACUM and does not require their involvement.

4. Inheriting Israeli patents: transfer, renewal, and what happens when fees lapse

Under Section 53 of the Patents Law 5727-1967, a patent is personal property and transfers to heirs by operation of law on death. The transfer is valid between the estate and the heirs immediately, but it is not effective against third parties until it is recorded at the Israel Patent Authority under Section 56. That means a competitor or would-be infringer can act as though the patent still belongs to the deceased until the registration is updated.

To record the transfer at the IPA, the heir submits the succession or probate order, identity documents for all heirs receiving the patent, and the completed transfer form (currently Form PA/17 on the IPA portal at rpa.gov.il), along with a registration fee of approximately NIS 400 per patent at 2026 rates. Verify the current fee on the IPA schedule before filing, as amounts are periodically adjusted.

There is no hard deadline on filing the transfer form after the succession order arrives, but there is a very good reason to act immediately: Israeli patents require annual renewal fees to stay alive. Under Section 54 of the Patents Law, a patent lapses when a fee goes unpaid. The economic value in the estate evaporates quietly if nobody picks up the payment calendar.

In Practice โ€” Patent lapse and reinstatement after the inventor dies: Israeli patents require annual renewal fees at the IPA starting from the third anniversary of the filing date. Fees escalate each year, running from a few hundred shekels in early years to approximately NIS 3,000โ€“6,000 per year for older patents (2026 rates, confirm at rpa.gov.il). If the inventor died and no heir, estate administrator, or attorney was paying renewals, the patent may have lapsed. Check the patent's status first โ€” search the IPA's online database by the inventor's name or the patent number. If the patent lapsed within the last 12 months, Section 57A of the Patents Law allows reinstatement on application to the Director of Patents, provided the failure to pay was not deliberate, and payment of the overdue fee plus a reinstatement fee. Beyond 12 months, reinstatement requires a court order under Section 57B, and courts apply a high threshold. The lesson: once you know an estate includes patents, instruct an Israeli patent attorney to check status and take over renewal obligations immediately, even before the succession order arrives.

5. Trademark inheritance: recording the transfer

Registered trademarks in Israel fall under the Trade Marks Ordinance [New Version] 5732-1972 and are renewable every 10 years. They pass to heirs as personal property, but the transfer is only effective against third parties once it is recorded in the Register of Trade Marks at the Israel Patent Authority.

To record the change, the heir files the IPA's mark assignment form together with the succession order and the applicable fee. The IPA then publishes a notice of the assignment in the Official Gazette and holds a 90-day opposition window under Section 27 of the Ordinance before entering the change. The IPA does not vet the heir's identity during this period; the opposition window simply gives anyone who disputes the assignment a chance to challenge it.

Two things trip heirs up. The first is the renewal date. If the mark was due for renewal and the owner died before paying, it lapses under Section 36 of the Ordinance. The IPA gives a six-month grace period after the deadline for late renewal with a surcharge; once that window closes, the mark is removed from the register and any third party can apply to re-register it. Check the renewal status on the IPA database as soon as you know the estate includes trademarks.

The second issue is use. Israeli law requires that a registered mark be put to genuine commercial use. If no one is trading under it because the business closed at death, a third party can apply to cancel the mark for non-use after three years under Section 41 of the Ordinance. Heirs who want to preserve a valuable brand need to either resume commercial use, licence the mark to an active business, or make a deliberate call about whether the registration is still worth the renewal cost.

6. Collecting ongoing royalties as an heir

Royalty income from Israeli IP arrives through several separate channels. Each one requires its own notification step after the succession order is in hand.

ACUM distributes quarterly to registered members and their estates. Submit the succession order to ACUM's membership department and it will redirect future royalty distributions to the estate account. For musical works, also check TALI (phonogram producers) and ILDB (Israeli music distribution rights); if the deceased produced recordings as well as composing, TALI may hold a separate entitlement that ACUM does not cover.

For publishers, software licensees, and patent licensees, the procedure is a written notification with a copy of the succession order, directing that payments be redirected to the estate bank account. Under Section 2 of the Contracts Law (General Part) 5733-1973, valid agreements bind the estate unless the contract specified that performance was personal to the deceased. That exception is narrow; most commercial IP licences do not qualify.

A question that comes up regularly: what happens to royalties under a licence that was signed for a fixed term and has years left to run? The answer is that the licence does not end because the licensor died. The heir steps into the licensor's position and receives royalties for whatever term remains. The licensee has no automatic right to renegotiate, and any clause that tries to use the licensor's death as a termination trigger is almost certainly void unless the contract made that explicit and the circumstances justify it.

In Practice โ€” Discovering undisclosed royalty income during estate administration: Families frequently do not know about IP assets because the deceased kept business matters separate from personal ones. After a death, the estate administrator has wide powers to investigate assets under the Inheritance Law and the Legal Capacity and Guardianship Law 5722-1962 (as applicable to estate administration). Practically: (1) search the Israel Patent Authority database by name and company name; (2) check ACUM's membership list, which is publicly searchable by member name; (3) look at all bank statements for royalty deposits โ€” they usually appear as standing transfers from ACUM, from the Registrar of Copyrights, or from named licensees; (4) ask the estate's Israeli attorney to run a company registry search to identify any Israeli companies in which the deceased held shares, since those companies may themselves hold IP. The discovery timeline can be long: some royalty sources only remit annually, and ACUM may not surface until the next quarterly distribution date. Build six months of royalty research into your estate administration timeline.

7. The probate process for IP: one order, several registrations

The succession order or probate order you obtain for a bank account or apartment works for IP too. You do not file a separate court application for each category of right. The succession order issued by the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs (Rasham LeInyanei Yerusha) under Section 66 of the Inheritance Law establishes entitlement to the entire estate, IP included.

The application costs approximately NIS 507 online or NIS 597 on paper, plus a mandatory publication fee of approximately NIS 66 for the public notice period. From filing to order: 3 to 5 months for an uncontested estate. Where the IP itself is in dispute โ€” a patent that a co-founder claims was jointly invented, or a copyright where authorship is contested โ€” those arguments go to the District Court on a separate track and can run considerably longer.

Once the order is in hand, each registry needs its own filing: the IPA for patents, trademarks, and designs (one application per right); ACUM and other collecting societies by written notification; publishers and licensees by letter. None of these require you to attend in person. A foreign heir can appoint an Israeli attorney under an apostilled power of attorney drawn in their home country, and that attorney handles every registration and notification without the heir needing to travel.

8. Tax when heirs receive and later sell Israeli IP

Israel abolished its inheritance tax in 1981. IP that passes to heirs at death triggers no immediate tax liability. The heir takes the deceased's position as rights holder from day one, with no transfer charge.

Royalties the heir collects going forward are Israeli-source income and are taxable in Israel for the year received. An Israeli-resident heir declares them on their annual return to the Israel Tax Authority (ITA). A non-resident heir is generally subject to Israeli withholding tax at source, at a rate set by the applicable double tax treaty between Israel and the heir's country of residence. Israel has active treaties with over 50 countries; the ITA publishes the current rates on its website.

If the heir eventually sells the IP rights, Israeli capital gains tax applies under the Income Tax Ordinance [New Version] 5721-1961. The cost basis is not the inheritance date value โ€” it is the original cost to the deceased, under the continuity rule in Section 88 et seq. of the Ordinance. Where the deceased created the IP themselves rather than buying it, the original cost is typically nil, so the heir pays CGT on the full sale proceeds less allowable expenses. The standard individual rate is 25%, or 30% for a substantial shareholder holding 10% or more of the company through which the IP is exploited. Non-resident sellers face the same rates, though treaty relief may reduce the Israeli charge. Get tax advice before any significant IP sale; IP valuations are contested, and the ITA looks carefully at them.