On June 19, 2026, the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) released a mid-year supplement to its Examination Guidelines for AI-Related Inventions, responding to the rapid rise of AI-generated and AI-assisted R&D outputs. The practical question is no longer simply whether AI may be used in research. It is how examiners will separate inventorship from tool use when the claimed advance rests on fine-tuning, parameter retraining, domain adaptation, or the selective shaping of model outputs.The signal from the supplement is fairly clear. South Korea is not moving toward recognizing the...
South Africa’s draft national AI policy did not unravel because of a minor editorial slip. It was pulled because a policy meant to promote trustworthy AI was found to contain fictitious academic references, apparently generated without proper verification. The draft had been published for public comment on 10 April, was withdrawn by Minister Solly Malatsi on 26 April, and by 26 May the government was already promising a rewritten text through an independent expert panel, with fresh public consultation now targeted for January 2027.That timeline matters well beyond South Africa. For legal...
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 2 July, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) moved a practical question to the centre of design filing strategy: when an applicant submits visuals produced with generative AI, can it still show that a human being meaningfully shaped the final design? For applicants relying heavily on outputs from tools such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, that question is no longer theoretical. It now goes directly to filing resilience.The new guidance does not shut the door on AI-assisted design work. What it does is draw a firmer line around applications that look like “prompt in, image...
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...
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...
Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) has placed examination efficiency at the centre of its 2026 action plan, with artificial intelligence tools expected to support searches, classification and substantive review for trademarks and industrial designs. For applicants, this should not be read as a simple IT update. If the new tools are matched with reliable data, examiner oversight and clear operating criteria, Brazil’s long examination timelines could begin to move in a more predictable direction.The plan also points to stronger regional protection for geographical...
The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) has put digital technologies back at the centre of the patent debate. Its recent trend analysis shows continued growth in patent applications linked to digital key technologies, with particularly visible movement in computer technology, audiovisual technology and related fields. Within those categories, generative AI, machine learning, virtual modelling and industrial digital twins are becoming harder to separate from one another.The point is not simply that more AI-related applications are being filed. The more practical issue is that DPMA’s...
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...
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...
On 15 July 2026, as the 68th WIPO Assemblies in Geneva reviewed the work of the Advisory Committee on Enforcement (ACE), the African Group placed generative-AI infringement, online piracy and digital counterfeiting among the enforcement gaps most exposed by fast-moving technologies. Its statement called for more targeted WIPO technical assistance and capacity building for African digital markets, intellectual property offices and enforcement authorities, arguing that legal tools, platform cooperation and digital-evidence capabilities have not kept pace with the scale and speed of online...
On 14 July 2026, the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO) introduced the Digital & Green Gateway (DGG), an accelerated patent examination route aimed at inventions involving artificial intelligence models, big-data processing algorithms and clean-energy technologies. Under the announced framework, applications that satisfy the basic formal requirements may request DGG treatment without an additional acceleration fee, with MyIPO targeting a first office action within four months. Eligible technology start-ups may also receive a reduction of up to 50% in the substantive...
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...
Taylor Swift’s team has recently filed U.S. trademark applications tied to distinctive voice clips and a stage image, a move widely seen as an attempt to get ahead of the growing misuse of AI deepfakes. As voice cloning, fake endorsements and highly realistic synthetic images become easier to produce, copyright and post-hoc takedowns often do not fully solve the problem. Pushing recognisable vocal and visual identifiers into trademark law is less about turning every personal trait into a mark, and more about building a stronger legal theory around source, confusion and misleading commercial...
Recent media reports indicate that a German publisher has sued an AI company over generative AI-related copyright issues, with the dispute framed around the use of training data, whether model training can amount to reproduction of protected works, and how legally relevant similarity between outputs and original works should be assessed. The case has drawn attention not only because it sits at the intersection of German copyright law and AI training practices, but also because it signals that traditional content rightsholders are increasingly willing to use litigation in more jurisdictions...
On 14 July 2026, Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology, known for its Xiao-i Robot platform, announced that the Shanghai High People’s Court had rejected all of its claims in case (2020) Hu Zhi Min Chu No. 7. The court found that Apple’s Siri did not infringe Chinese invention patent ZL200410053749.9, covering a “chatbot system”. Zhizhen had sought an injunction and damages provisionally calculated at RMB 10 billion, making the dispute one of China’s most closely watched high-value patent cases involving artificial intelligence and consumer electronics.The ruling is a reminder...
Canada’s patentability analysis for AI and computer-implemented inventions is moving into a markedly less forgiving phase. CIPO’s March 2026 Practice Notice put the spotlight squarely on the “physicality” requirement implicit in subsection 27(8) and section 2 of the Patent Act: if a claim merely has a computer process an abstract algorithm in a well-known way, without a discernible physical effect, physical change, or an improvement in the functioning of the computer itself, eligibility risk rises quickly.By late June, practitioner feedback suggests that this is no longer just a policy...
