The U.S. Copyright Office has issued an interim assessment on digital platform copyright governance and AI infringement liability, placing social media services, content-sharing platforms and built-in generative AI tools within the same policy conversation. The report’s immediate focus is not whether AI-generated content is useful, but whether automated AI systems used for DMCA notice-and-takedown can deal fairly with mistaken removals, under-removal and counter-notice procedures.The more difficult issue is the platform’s changing role. The traditional safe-harbour model rests on a familiar...

Under the Digital Services Act, trusted flaggers were already supposed to enjoy priority treatment when they submit notices of illegal content. What is changing now is more operational. With sandbox testing of a copyright infringement notice API toolkit being opened to the first certified trusted flaggers with support from the EUIPO Observatory and the European Commission, some large-scale right holders and their agents are starting to move away from the fragmented webforms of individual platforms and toward a structured route into platform enforcement systems.That sounds like a technical...

In early June, WIPO Director General Daren Tang appeared in Abuja for the unveiling of the WIPO Nigeria Office, while Nigeria simultaneously pushed its National Intellectual Property Policy and Strategy (NIPPS) into a much more operational frame. Read separately, these look like two familiar headlines: a new office and a new policy. Read together, they point to something larger. Nigeria is trying to move intellectual property out of the narrow register-and-enforce box and into the machinery of creative exports, research commercialization and cross-border investment.There is one detail worth...

Canada’s latest public signals on generative AI and copyright are no longer just about labelling synthetic content. The direction is broader: platforms are being pushed away from a pure notice-and-takedown posture and toward a framework built on prior authorisation, transparency and a more defensible approach to remuneration. Across the 2025 copyright consultation summary and the 2026 Canadian Heritage committee report, the same point keeps resurfacing: creators’ ability to consent, be credited and be paid cannot simply dissolve because AI systems scale faster than copyright administration...

On May 9, 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office released the pre-publication version of Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 3: Generative AI Training. The report does not endorse either extreme. It does not say all AI training is infringement, and it does not offer a blanket fair use safe harbor. Instead, it pushes the analysis back to the facts that matter: what was copied, how the material was obtained, whether licensing markets exist, and how the use affects rightsholders in practice. For AI companies, that is a meaningful shift. Large-scale scraping is now much harder to frame as a...

On 9 July 2026, OAPI and IFRRO signed a new 2026-2027 work plan in Geneva, with the centre of gravity shifting toward platform compliance, private-copying remuneration and stronger collective management in the digital environment. According to the official announcement, the next phase will support copyright infrastructure, educational and online-copying remuneration mechanisms, and customs-facing enforcement channels in member states including Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire. The practical direction is clear: OAPI’s 17 member states are moving from general copyright protection language toward a...

As of 20 June 2026, Thailand’s Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) is no longer merely experimenting with faster trademark procedures for the digital economy. The Fast Track 4 Month Plus+ route has started to show what it really is: not a relaxed shortcut, but a tightly managed lane for applicants that can present a clean, e-filed, single-class case with standard specifications, prior searches, and a credible need to use the mark on online platforms. For businesses racing to secure a filing position before marketplace launches or platform onboarding, that is useful news. It also means...

Debate over AI and copyright in the UK has flared up again in late June 2026, but the real significance lies in two policy signals that are harder to ignore. In its March 2026 report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, the government stepped back from its earlier preference for a commercial text and data mining exception built around rights reservation and transparency. At the same time, it signalled that the UK’s special copyright protection for wholly computer-generated works may no longer deserve to survive.This is not final legislation. It is, however, a serious change in policy...

By mid-July 2026, two significant intellectual property reforms in East Africa had moved into sharper focus. Tanzania’s Written Laws (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, 2026 remains under legislative consideration and proposes coordinated changes to the Trade and Service Marks Act and the Patents (Registration) Act. The draft would recognise ARIPO trade marks designating Tanzania, strengthen protection for well-known, collective and certification marks, extend the patent term from ten years to twenty years from filing, and reinforce the utility model framework. If adopted in its current...

The U.S. Copyright Office is pushing AI use in creative work out of the realm of vague disclosure and into something far more structured. Under its updated registration approach, applicants are expected to draw a clearer line between the parts of a work authored by a human and the parts generated by AI, whether the material is text, images, audio, or a mixed-format output.The practical importance goes well beyond one more compliance step. Since 2023, the Office has required applicants to disclose more than a de minimis amount of AI-generated material and to describe the human author’s...

India’s Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) has notified users that scheduled maintenance of its copyright e-services has been completed, with online filing, public search and e-register services fully restored from 6:00 p.m. on 12 May 2026. For applicants and representatives, the immediate task is practical rather than theoretical: check pending filings, any deadline arrangements linked to the outage, and the accuracy of system records once the portal is back in operation.The notice comes as CGPDTM is also promoting recent gains in patent...

On 17 June 2026, EUIPO said that more than 66,000 counterfeit sports items had been seized in a cross-border enforcement action tied to the run-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The headline number matters, but the more consequential signal sits behind it: EUIPO used the operation to point the market toward a tougher online enforcement agenda covering cross-border marketplaces, social-media traffic funnels and dynamic blocking injunctions.For rights holders, platforms and event-adjacent brands, this is not just another anti-counterfeiting update. Over recent months EUIPO and other EU actors...

The UK Intellectual Property Office’s 2026–27 Corporate Plan places service transformation and AI copyright policy among its main delivery priorities. The official publication record shows that the plan was first published on 11 May 2026. With the patent side of One IPO moving into optimisation and legacy-system retirement, UKIPO plans to begin designing the trade mark service on the same shared technology base. It also acknowledges operational pressure: rising trade mark volumes have created backlogs in hearings and tribunals, while patent workloads remain affected by application growth...

In the Philippines, the latest shift in copyright registration is no longer just a policy update on paper. By the week of 17 June 2026, the market signal had become much clearer in practice: applications now move through IPOPHL’s electronic filing channel, not the old paper-based route, and the registration process is being treated more openly as a substantive screening point rather than a clerical formality.The sharper development is the refusal logic now sitting inside that workflow. Under the revised framework, “lack of human authorship,” originality, and creative expression are squarely...

Vietnam’s response to the U.S. Section 301 intellectual-property investigation is now moving on a compressed clock. On April 30, 2026, USTR identified Vietnam as the only Priority Foreign Country in its Special 301 Report. On May 29, it formally opened a Section 301 investigation, and written comments are due by July 2 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. By mid-June, IP Vietnam had publicly pushed forward the legal-service-provider selection and follow-up guidance for the government’s defense work, a sign that the matter has moved beyond general positioning and into a final evidence-and-arguments sprint.The...

On July 1, 2026, the U.S. Copyright Office released new practical guidance on how the DMCA notice-and-takedown framework should operate when the disputed material is AI-generated, deepfaked, or synthetically performed. The point that stands out is not that automation has become irrelevant. It is that platforms cannot treat an automated assessment of “possible fair use” as a substitute for substantive review when a copyright complaint is already on the table.The sharper compliance risk appears at the counter-notice stage. According to the guidance, if the uploader disputes the takedown and...

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...

The application window for the WIPO Global Awards 2026 will close on March 31 at 23:59 Central European Time. The program is open to startups and SMEs from all 194 WIPO Member States, but the real test is not simply whether a business owns patents, trademarks, designs or copyrights. The stronger question is whether those rights have already been turned into something economically and socially legible: market entry, product differentiation, licensing leverage, investor credibility, operational scale, or measurable public impact. For innovative companies that already sit on a meaningful mix...

On 26 March 2026, Advocate General Nicholas Emiliou delivered his Opinion in Case C-579/24 Austro-Mechana and AKM, adding an important new layer to the licensing architecture for online content-sharing service providers under the EU Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. In his view, when users upload protected content to a platform, the process does not involve only an act of communication to the public or making available to the public; it also involves acts of reproduction in the form of digital copies made on the platform’s servers.The real significance of the Opinion,...

On March 19, 2026, the U.S. Copyright Office announced in NewsNet that it would publish a proposed rule in the Federal Register to seek public comment on adjustments to its fee schedule. The proposed rule was published on March 20, 2026, and written comments are due by May 4, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. The notice launches a new round of public debate over the pricing of copyright registration, recordation, and related administrative services.This is not simply a routine pricing update. The Office explained that it reviews and updates fees every few years, with the last adjustment...