Saudi Arabia’s new Copyright Law will take effect on 12 August 2026, replacing the 2003 framework. Approved by Royal Decree No. M/169 and published in the Official Gazette on 13 February 2026, the law introduces a closely watched exception allowing reproduction of lawfully published works for the development of artificial intelligence products and algorithms, provided the user has lawfully obtained the original and the copying remains limited to that purpose. The provision is not a blanket licence for web scraping or large-scale model training: use must still satisfy the law’s safeguards...

In early August 2026, South Korea’s former Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), now elevated to the ministry-level Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP), moved to deepen its technical examination strategy for artificial intelligence and other future-growth technologies. The plan places AI, spatial computing and related strategic fields more prominently within examination capacity building, signalling an effort to make specialist patent examination a more active part of Korea’s innovation policy and international IP role.MOIP has also updated the fee charged in its capacity as a...

Debate is intensifying across European patent practice over a practical question that used to sound theoretical: what happens when generative AI starts mass-producing technical disclosures that are later cited against fresh filings? What can be verified publicly is not a newly published EPO rule aimed specifically at “synthetic prior art”, but the continued force of a familiar one in the 2026 EPO Guidelines: a prior-art document must give the skilled person enough information to carry out the relevant technical teaching. A polished text is not enough on its own.That point matters much more...

MyIPO opened a public consultation on 3 July 2026 on proposed amendments to Malaysia’s Copyright Act 1987, with comments due by 14 August. The package spans AI and text-and-data mining, digital enforcement and copyright commercialisation. Among the proposals are rules for the use of protected works in AI training; stronger safeguards for technological protection measures (TPMs) and rights management information (RMI); a tighter online service-provider safe harbour with a notice-and-takedown window that may be as short as 12 hours; dynamic injunctions capable of reaching mirror, clone and...

On 13 August 2026, IP Australia updated its patent examination practice to give a more detailed and broader reading of technologies that may qualify for accelerated examination on environmental grounds. The scope is no longer framed only around conventional green hardware such as solar equipment or battery materials: smart-grid technologies, carbon-footprint accounting and AI-based energy optimisation software aimed at reducing data-centre power consumption are now being treated as part of the green-technology fast-track landscape. IP Australia’s current examination manual already...

After a pilot phase, the European Patent Office has announced the wider use of AI-assisted tools for preparing minutes of oral proceedings. Under the workflow described by the EPO, audio from the hearing can first be transcribed by an AI tool, after which members of the division may use another AI tool to prepare a draft of the minutes; the final record remains under the responsibility of the competent examining or opposition division. The point is not to automate oral proceedings, but to make an important procedural record faster to produce and easier to check.For applicants, opponents and...

Korea’s Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP) has launched a consolidated “AI, Data and Intellectual Property” webpage on the Korea Institute of Intellectual Property (KIIP) website, bringing together research materials on the intersection of artificial intelligence, data and IP. The page is organised around four areas: AI technology and patent trends, AI and IP policy systems, data and IP, and AI-generated works and IP. In practical terms, it gives users one place to follow issues such as copyright in AI-generated outputs, inventorship and examination questions for AI-related...

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued supplemental guidance on generative AI and patent examination, bringing two practical questions into the same frame: how examiners should treat material that appears to have been generated by AI when it is cited as prior art, and how applicants should explain human contribution in inventions developed with AI assistance.The message is not that AI-generated material is automatically irrelevant. Nor is it that anything found online is reliable enough to defeat novelty or support an obviousness rejection. The centre of gravity moves back...

The market reaction to the Japan Patent Office’s mid-2026 revision of its AI-related invention guidance should not stop at the headline that MLLMs and cross-modal generative AI are now being treated more explicitly. The practical shift is deeper. For applicants, the revision changes how the specification should be written, where the technical contribution needs to be located, and how inventive-step and description arguments are likely to be tested in prosecution.The direction is not surprising. JPO had already added 10 new AI-related examination cases in 2024, and its March 2026 report on...

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have jointly released AI-enabled Health Innovation and IP: From idea to impact. Developed under the Global Initiative on AI for Health, the publication is designed for innovators, start-ups, research institutions and partners seeking to move AI-based health technologies from early development to practical deployment. It covers patents, trade secrets, copyright and data protection, alongside licensing, collaboration, regulation, health-data governance...

After hosting the 19th IP5 Heads of Office Meeting on 12 June, the Japan Patent Office said on 16 June that the five offices had agreed on new directions for AI-focused co-operation and would establish a dedicated working group to carry the discussion forward. Read literally, that announcement is still framework-level. It does not yet amount to a single binding AI patent rulebook shared word for word across Japan, Europe, China, Korea and the United States.What matters for applicants is something narrower and more practical. The JPO already has updated AI case examples, refreshed handbook...

Effective January 1, 2026, the 13th edition of the Nice Classification (NCL 13-2026) introduced a set of changes that go well beyond editorial cleanup. Several commonly used goods were reclassified into new classes: spectacles, contact lenses and sunglasses moved to Class 10; electric toothbrushes moved to Class 21; heated clothing moved to Class 25; emergency and rescue vehicles moved to Class 12. Class 42 also added new terminology including “Artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS).” For businesses preparing new trademark filings, international extensions, renewals or portfolio...

Specialist legal and intellectual property sources reporting between January and March 2026 show that Vietnam’s 2025 amended Law on Intellectual Property took effect on 1 April 2026. The real significance of this reform is not limited to shorter procedural deadlines. It lies in the clearer repositioning of intellectual property as a commercial asset that may be valued, recorded, transferred, licensed and even used as collateral. At the same time, faster trademark and industrial design examination, stronger tools against online infringement, the express treatment of “storage” of counterfeit...

On April 2, 2026, the China National Intellectual Property Administration issued its notice on the 2026 National IP Publicity Week, confirming that the campaign will run from April 20 to 26 under the theme “Strengthening Intellectual Property Protection in Emerging Fields, Accelerating the Development of New Quality Productive Forces.” The notice also sets out four publicity priorities: promoting important instructions on intellectual property work, presenting the high-quality development achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, highlighting IP protection practices in emerging...

On February 17, 2026, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched the World Intellectual Property Report 2026: Technology on the Move. Drawing on 250 years of historical evidence and five decades of patent-citation analysis, the report asks a question that matters more than invention alone: how quickly, how widely and how deeply do new technologies actually diffuse across countries, firms and industries?The report’s most important message is twofold. First, diffusion is clearly accelerating. Technologies such as the telegraph and the automobile took around four decades to...

Recent debate around the USPTO and Section 101 has made one point sound simpler than it really is: that an AI patent claim becomes easier to defend as soon as the application says the invention involves model training. The official materials tell a narrower and more useful story. From the 2024 AI subject matter eligibility update, to the August 2025 reminder memo, to the late-2025 MPEP change prompted by Ex parte Desjardins, the clearer direction is not a special AI shortcut. It is that claims framed as a black box that takes in data and produces a result remain vulnerable to abstraction,...

As 1 July approaches, IP Australia has made two process signals hard to ignore. One is the reorganisation of patent examination teams across electrical, communications and computing technologies. The other is the start of a new excess-claims fee workflow, under which applicants will be reminded three months after requesting examination if their claim set still sits above the free threshold. These are not isolated administrative notices. Together, they change how applicants should think about timing, claim volume and technical positioning before examination really starts.A third signal...

On 1 August 2026, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) issued its first-month examination feedback following the 1 July rollout of the revised EU design framework. With MP4, OBJ, STL and other dynamic or three-dimensional digital formats now accepted, early filings have exposed a practical weakness: visual disclaimers created through blurring, colour masking or similar techniques often fail to remain consistent across animation frames or viewing angles, particularly in files generated by AI tools or exported directly from modelling software.EUIPO’s message is...

Malaysia’s Intellectual Property Corporation (MyIPO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization have introduced the Creative Economy Data Model at a national CEDM forum. MyIPO Director General Yusnieza Syarmila Yusoff said the model is designed to measure the creative economy across its full value chain rather than relying only on output indicators such as revenue, jobs or exports. Its scope includes digital transformation, platform-based activity, emerging business models and the growing impact of artificial intelligence on copyright industries.The policy value of the model will...

China’s latest revision to the Patent Examination Guidelines, published by CNIPA at the end of 2025 and effective from January 1, 2026, makes the examination framework for inventions involving artificial intelligence, big data and algorithm-related features significantly more explicit. The revised text renames the relevant section to cover inventions involving AI, big data and other solutions containing algorithmic features or business rules and methods, while also adding a clearer Article 5(1) filter for content that violates law, social morality or the public interest.This is more than a...