Quick Answer: Israeli copyright, patents and registered trademarks are estate property. They pass to the heirs under the will, or under the Inheritance Law 5725-1965 if there is none, just as a bank account does. Copyright passes by operation of law (Copyright Law 5768-2007, s.37) and lasts 70 years after the author's death (s.38), and there is nothing to register. Patents and trademarks also pass by law, but the heirs need their title recorded at the Israel Patent Office and the renewal fees kept up, or the right can lapse. Everything starts with an Israeli succession order or probate order.

Heirs go looking for bank accounts, apartments and pension funds. Intellectual property is rarely on the list, even when it is worth more than everything else: royalties from a novel or a catalogue of songs, a patent that a company pays licence fees on, a brand that a former partner kept trading under after the owner died.

Families who manage an Israeli estate from abroad miss these assets more often than local families do, partly because nobody tells them. The Israel Patent Office (Rashut HaPatentim, רשות הפטנטים) keeps the patent, design and trademark registers, but it does not learn of an owner's death on its own. Copyright has no register in Israel at all. Collecting societies and publishers keep paying whoever is on their books until someone shows them a court document. The heirs have to come forward, and with patents and trademarks the cost of waiting can be losing the right entirely.

1. Intellectual property as an estate asset

The Inheritance Law decides who inherits and in what shares. It has no special chapter on IP and does not need one, because each IP statute allows its rights to pass by operation of law:

  • Copyright "is transferable by contract or by law" (Copyright Law 5768-2007, s.37(a)).
  • Rights in a patent "can be transferred in writing and pass by operation of law" (Patents Law 5727-1967, s.82).
  • A person who acquires a registered trademark "by operation of law" applies to the Registrar to record that title (Trade Marks Ordinance [New Version] 5732-1972, s.49(a)).

So an Israeli copyright, patent or trademark sits in the estate next to the apartment. It goes to the heirs named in the will, or to the intestate heirs under the rules that begin at section 10 of the Inheritance Law, through the same succession or probate order.

One thing heirs should check early is who owned the work in the first place. Under section 34 of the Copyright Law, a work an employee created for the purposes of their job belongs to the employer unless they agreed otherwise. A parent who wrote software for decades as a salaried engineer may have left the family nothing in that code. A book written at the kitchen table on weekends is a different matter.

Section 38 of the Copyright Law sets the term at the author's lifetime plus 70 years after death. Section 43 says the term ends on 31 December of the last year, so the clock effectively runs to the end of the 70th calendar year after the death. The other rules heirs run into:

  • Joint works: the 70 years run from the death of the last surviving co-author (s.39).
  • Anonymous works: 70 years from first publication (s.40).
  • Sound recordings: a separate 70-year term counted from creation or publication (s.41), held by the producer of the recording rather than by the songwriter.

In practical terms, the heirs of an author who died in 2026 hold the copyright until the end of 2096. During that time they can license the work, collect royalties and sue infringers. Section 54 lets the copyright owner, or an exclusive licensee, bring the infringement claim.

There is nothing to file to acquire the right. What the heirs do need to do is show each payer (a collecting society, a publisher, a licensee) that the money is now theirs. In practice every one of them will ask for the succession order or probate order before redirecting payments.

3. Moral rights after the author's death

Israeli law separates the economic copyright from the author's moral right: the right to be credited to the extent appropriate in the circumstances, and the right to object to distortion or other changes that harm the author's honour or reputation (s.46). The moral right lasts as long as the copyright in the work (s.45(a)). It is personal and cannot be transferred (s.45(b)), so it does not pass under the will like the economic rights do.

What happens after death is set by section 55. If the moral right is infringed after the author died, the claim belongs to the author's close relatives, which the section defines as a spouse, descendant, parent or sibling. That list does not always match the list of heirs. A will that leaves the copyright to a foundation or a friend moves the royalties, but the right to sue over a mutilated edition stays with the family.

Infringing copyright or a moral right is a civil wrong (s.52). Under section 56 the court can award statutory damages of up to NIS 100,000 per infringement without proof of actual loss, which is often the most useful remedy for an estate, since proving lost income from an unauthorised reissue is hard.

4. Inheriting Israeli patents: transfer, renewal and lapse

An Israeli patent runs for 20 years from the filing date (Patents Law, s.52), so older inventions in the estate may already be in the public domain. For live patents, the rights pass to the heirs by operation of law under section 82. Section 83, which denies a transfer any effect against third parties until it is registered, speaks of transfers "under an agreement". It does not apply to inheritance as such, but heirs still need the register updated. Until it shows them as owners, licensees and the Patent Office are dealing with a dead person's name, and the heirs will struggle to license or enforce the patent in their own names.

The bigger risk is renewal fees. Under section 56, a patent stays in force only while renewal fees are paid on the dates set in the regulations, and it lapses on the due date if a fee goes unpaid. Section 57 gives six months to pay late with a surcharge, and a patent paid within that window is treated as never having lapsed.

After the six months, the remaining route is an application to restore the patent under sections 59 to 62. The Registrar has to be satisfied that there was a reasonable cause for not paying, that the owner did not intend the patent to lapse, and that the application was filed as soon as reasonably possible after the owner learned of the non-payment (s.60). The application is published and anyone may oppose it within three months (s.61). If there is no opposition, or it fails, the Registrar may restore the patent on conditions (s.62).

In Practice: Take an inventor who dies in Haifa with a granted patent licensed to a local manufacturer, while both children live in London. A renewal fee falls due three months later and nobody pays it. If the family's Israeli patent attorney catches it inside the six-month grace period, the fee plus surcharge saves the patent cleanly. If the family only finds out a year later, the death of the owner is a reasonable explanation for the original miss, but section 60 also asks how quickly they acted once they knew. Weeks of further delay after discovery weaken the application, and the manufacturer may oppose it if it would rather stop paying royalties. Have someone check the status of every patent on the Patent Office database as soon as the estate is opened, before the succession order arrives.

5. Trademark inheritance: recording the transfer

A registered Israeli trademark lasts ten years from the filing date (Trade Marks Ordinance, s.31) and can be renewed for further ten-year periods (s.32). The heirs' first job is the same as with patents: apply to the Registrar under section 49(a) to record their title, with the succession or probate order as proof. Until that is done, section 49(c) says the unrecorded document generally cannot be used in court as evidence of title to the mark unless the court allows it, which matters if a competitor starts using the brand.

Two deadlines catch heirs out:

  • Renewal. If the renewal fee is not paid, there are six months after expiry to pay with a surcharge. After that the Registrar removes the mark, and the owner then has a further six months to ask for restoration, which the Registrar grants only if he is satisfied that it is just to do so (s.33(b)).
  • Non-use. Anyone with a legitimate interest can apply to cancel a mark that has not been used in good faith during the three years before the application (s.41). If the business closed when the owner died, that clock is already running. Heirs who want to keep the brand need to resume use or license it to someone who will.

6. Royalties, licences and collecting societies

Royalties from Israeli IP usually come through several unrelated channels, and each needs its own notice:

  • ACUM, the Israeli society of authors, composers and music publishers, for performance, broadcast and similar uses of songs and texts by its members.
  • Publishers and record labels under the deceased's own contracts.
  • Software, patent and brand licensees under licence agreements.
  • Bodies administering performers' rights, which are a separate right under the Performers and Broadcasters Rights Law 5744-1984, if the deceased also performed.

A licence does not end because the licensor died. The estate steps into the licensor's position and keeps receiving royalties for the rest of the term, unless the contract itself ties the licence to the licensor personally. Read every licence for a termination-on-death clause before assuming the money will keep coming.

Finding these sources is often the hard part. Bank statements are the best lead: regular deposits from ACUM, a publisher or a foreign company are hard to miss. The Patent Office database can be searched by owner name, and a search of the Israeli Companies Registrar shows whether the deceased held shares in a company that may own IP itself. Our guide to locating undisclosed assets in an Israeli estate covers the searches in more detail.

7. Step by step for heirs living abroad

The succession order or probate order issued by the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs (HaRasham LeInyanei Yerusha) under section 66 of the Inheritance Law covers the whole estate, IP included. Nobody files a separate court case for each right. The Registrar's 2026 fees are NIS 507 for an online application plus NIS 66 for the mandatory publication. A disputed question about the IP itself, such as a co-founder who claims to be a joint inventor, goes to court separately.

  1. Within the first weeks, list every possible IP asset and check the Patent Office database for patents, designs and marks in the deceased's name or company names. Note every renewal date.
  2. Ask an Israeli patent attorney to pay any fee that is falling due now. Missing a renewal while waiting for the order is the most expensive mistake in this area.
  3. Apply for the succession or probate order (see our guide to the Israeli probate process).
  4. Once the order is issued, apply to record the heirs' title for each patent, design and trademark, and send the order to ACUM, publishers and licensees with new payment details.
  5. Decide what to keep. Older patents near the end of their term, or marks nobody will use, may not be worth renewing.

None of this requires travel to Israel. Heirs abroad usually sign a power of attorney in front of a notary in their own country, have it apostilled, and let an Israeli lawyer and patent attorney handle the filings (see our guide to apostilles for Israeli use). Patent and trademark proceedings need an Israeli address for documents, which is normally the attorney's office.

8. Tax when heirs receive, earn from or sell Israeli IP

Israel abolished estate tax in 1981, and receiving IP by inheritance is not a taxable event. Section 88 of the Income Tax Ordinance excludes inheritance from the definition of a "sale", so no capital gains tax arises when the rights pass to the heirs.

Royalties earned after the death are a different matter. They are income, and Israeli-source royalties paid to a non-resident heir are generally subject to Israeli withholding at source. A tax treaty between Israel and the heir's country can lower the Israeli rate, and the heir's home country will usually tax the same income with a credit for the Israeli tax. Our guide to royalty withholding tax for non-residents explains how to claim a reduced rate.

A later sale of the rights needs advice before it is signed. How it is taxed depends on whether the sale is treated as a capital transaction or as income, and on the cost figures carried over from the deceased, and IP valuations are a common point of dispute with the Israel Tax Authority.