According to recent reporting by Asia IP, and as confirmed by official information released by the relevant authorities, from March 1, 2026, PCT applicants filing through IP Australia may designate the European Patent Office (EPO) or the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) as their International Searching Authority (ISA) and International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA), in addition to the previously available options of IP Australia and the Korean authority. For applicants using Australia as the receiving Office, this is more than a procedural update. It materially...

The Australian Government has further detailed its latest IP systems simplification package, with two changes standing out for applicants and rights holders. The first would replace the current Time to Acceptance model with a more responsive examination timetable, closer in spirit to the US approach. In practice, patent applicants could face shorter reply windows after an examination report, such as a two-month period for response, alongside tighter limits on the number of formal replies.The second proposal would allow patents and designs to use “virtual marking” through QR codes, barcodes...

IP Australia’s latest Australian IP Report 2026 records a sharp rise in filing activity during 2025: trade mark applications reached 97,345, up 13.3%, while design applications increased to 10,296, up 7.1%. Both categories set new records. Standard patent applications, by contrast, eased by 0.5% to 30,348, suggesting that technology filings have moved into a more selective phase rather than following the same expansion seen in brands and product appearance.The report’s research on firm performance gives the figures a practical edge. Businesses tend to show sustained gains in productivity,...

IP Australia has signalled a more deliberate effort to make trade mark opposition practice less expensive and less drawn out, with one of the most notable developments being a trial of Early Neutral Evaluation (ENE) before parties are pulled deep into the full evidence cycle. On the model now being discussed, a trade mark applicant and an opponent may choose to place their preliminary materials before an IP Australia decision-maker and receive a non-binding view on the relative strength of the case, the real points in dispute, and whether settlement or withdrawal makes more commercial sense...

IP Australia’s latest final consultation summary on the exposure draft for design law implementation points in a clear direction: protection for partial designs is moving closer to reality in Australia. The Office has already said it intends to progress reform so that applicants can protect part of a physical product, as part of a broader effort to make the design system more accessible and less cumbersome. For brand owners and product design teams, this is not a cosmetic adjustment. It goes to the level at which design rights can be carved out, how product families can be protected, and...

IP Australia has confirmed that, from 1 July 2026, the reminder process for patent excess claims will shift from the current "about six months before expected examination" model to a fixed window within three months after an examination request is filed. That is a practical change, not just an administrative one. A fixed trigger gives applicants and counsel a clearer point to review whether claims should be trimmed before examination starts, which in turn makes fee exposure and prosecution timing easier to manage.The real improvement is predictability. Instead of waiting for an estimate...

IP Australia’s current trade mark manual makes the point more plainly than before: a specification that is unrealistically broad can put intended use in issue at the examination stage. Filing an application will still usually be taken as indicating use or intended use, but that presumption no longer does all the work once the claimed goods or services are commercially implausible on their face.That matters for applicants who have relied on wide, placeholder-style filings to reserve room first and define the business later. In the digital economy, the familiar combination of classes 9, 35...

IP Australia’s current trade mark practice makes one point much clearer than before: in a three-year non-use dispute, it is not enough for a brand to point to a product page that happened to be visible from Australia. The harder question is whether the page, payment flow, delivery settings and surrounding marketing actually show that Australian consumers were being targeted. For cross-border e-commerce sellers, that is not a minor evidentiary tweak. It changes what kinds of digital records are likely to matter when a registration is challenged.The point is not that online evidence suddenly...

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 9 July 2026, India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and IP Australia signed an access agreement for the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) as part of the outcomes announced at the third India–Australia Annual Summit. Under the TKDL access framework, Australian patent examiners may use the database on a confidential basis for search and examination, drawing on a large body of documented traditional medicine formulations and related literature. IP Australia had already referred to TKDL as a non-patent literature resource in its examination guidance; the new...

IP Australia’s 2026 Australian Intellectual Property Report shows that trademark filings reached a record 97,345 in 2025, up 13.3%, while applications by Australian residents rose 15.1% to 55,913. Domestic standard complete patent filings also increased, from 2,578 to 2,810, a gain of 9.0%. Taken together, the patent, trademark and design data suggest that Australian businesses are making more deliberate use of IP to support branding, technology protection and product differentiation.The growth was not evenly distributed across filing origins. Standard patent applications from the United...