In early July 2026, the French signal is not just about counterfeit goods showing up at summer fairs. It is broader than that. Trade fairs, tourism season, online copying, platform visibility and cross-border brand exposure are all colliding at once. Read against the deeper cooperation framework between the INPI and French Customs, this is becoming a more integrated enforcement environment in which exhibitors, online sellers, right holders and advisers all face a shorter reaction window.For many innovative brands from Asia and other non-European markets, the pressure point is especially...
According to an Adams & Adams update published on 16 July 2026, Kenya’s High Court has set aside a directive issued by the Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industry on 30 September 2025. The directive required the registration, renewal and cancellation of trademarks, patents, utility models and industrial designs to receive prior approval from the KIPI Board. In Law Society of Kenya v. Principal Secretary, the Court found that the Principal Secretary had exceeded the limits of the office by reallocating powers already assigned by statute, restoring the authority of the Registrar of Trade...
A newly disclosed ruling from the UPC’s Munich Local Division puts a sharper spotlight on a familiar but often under-examined enforcement tactic: sending broad patent warning letters first and relying on commercial pressure before technical substantiation fully catches up. The message emerging from this development is not that warning letters are improper as such, but that the Court may look far more critically at campaigns built on expansive claim language without a concrete infringement record behind them.The more interesting shift is procedural. The defendants were able to push a form of...
By late June and early July 2026, the conversation around ARIPO’s 2026 Banjul Protocol amendments had shifted noticeably. This was no longer framed as a future change to watch. The amended text had already taken effect on 1 March 2026, and recent practitioner alerts were treating the new framework as something that now needs to be managed under live, stricter conditions. For trade mark owners using ARIPO as a regional route, the operational change is sharper than the headline suggests.The most consequential adjustments all sit at the front end of prosecution and maintenance. The window for...
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...
Singapore’s Intellectual Property Office (IPOS) has refined its practice guidance for trade mark applications covering virtual goods and Web3.0 services. Descriptions in Class 9 for downloadable virtual goods, Class 35 for retail services involving virtual goods, and Class 41 for virtual entertainment services are expected to identify the digital content or service with greater precision; broad wording such as “virtual goods” or generic NFT-related services may attract objections or require narrowing.The more consequential point concerns revocation for five years’ non-use. Displaying a...
Following World IP Day on 26 April, the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) has formally released guidance on enforcement for sports event broadcasts and related merchandise. The practical point is clear: illegal live streaming is now being treated as a time-sensitive copyright enforcement problem, with right holders expected to use pre-filed information to seek temporary blocking of specific infringing domains.For sports brands and content distributors, the value lies less in a new slogan and more in timing. A pirated match stream can capture its audience within...
South Africa’s Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) has launched an electronic trade mark hearing platform, the e-Tribunal Portal, for opposition, invalidity and related trade mark disputes. For brand owners, the change is more than a filing convenience. It brings a traditionally slow and paper-heavy dispute track closer to a managed digital case environment.The accompanying examination guidance also gives sharper treatment to filings made without a genuine intention to use and to bad-faith applications by agents or distributors. Under the new approach, once an opponent...
Egypt’s recently implemented Decisions No. 64 and 65 have drawn attention across the trademark and design community this week. Beyond the ordinary official fees, services relating to trademarks, commercial names, geographical indications and industrial designs are now subject to an additional fixed service fee of EGP 500. The measures also introduce a specialised corporate search service priced at EGP 2,000, while copies of historical expert reports may cost up to EGP 5,000.The immediate issue is not only the size of each individual charge, but how often these charges may appear in...
A fresh South African commentary this week has put the ClearVu line back into focus. The underlying Supreme Court of Appeal judgment dates from 2016, but the practical signal still matters now: buying a competitor’s trade mark as a hidden Google Ads keyword is not automatically unlawful. The harder question is whether the advertisement that users actually see creates confusion about source, affiliation, endorsement or commercial connection.The more important lesson sits one layer deeper. In ClearVu, the claimant was not advancing a straightforward registered-trade-mark infringement case. It...
On 21 April 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office published Designs Practice Notice 01/26 to clarify how applicants should file graphic symbols, icons, graphical and web user interfaces, and animated digital designs. The point is not that UKIPO has suddenly opened a brand-new category of rights. The more important move is that it has spelled out, in much firmer terms, what a compliant visual representation must do if the applicant wants the design to be treated as one registrable design rather than an unclear bundle of screens.That matters because digital design filings are often lost...
According to a 14 July 2026 report by Spoor & Fisher, the Kenya IP Authority Bill, 2026 has been introduced in the National Assembly. It proposes merging the Kenya Industrial Property Institute (KIPI), the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) and the Anti-Counterfeit Authority (ACA) into a single Kenya Intellectual Property Authority (KIPA), bringing patents, trademarks, industrial designs, copyright and anti-counterfeiting functions under one institutional framework. The bill also addresses mandatory IP recordation for imports, definitions for AI-assisted and AI-generated inventions, and a...
South Korea’s Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP, formerly KIPO) announced on 29 June 2026 that it was reorganising and expanding its response to technology leakage, with the new structure taking effect on 30 June. A dedicated Technology Leakage Special Judicial Police Division will now handle trade secret theft and leakage involving strategic sectors such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors, separating those investigations from routine patent and design infringement work. The technology police workforce is being increased from 27 to 61, with specialist investigators, patent...
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 April 8, 2026, the Intellectual Property Tribunal of China’s Supreme People’s Court published a hearing notice confirming that it would publicly hear an invention patent invalidation administrative dispute on April 10, 2026 at 9:30 a.m. in its Fourth Courtroom. According to the notice, the appellant is the China National Intellectual Property Administration, the appellees are Zhenjiang Best New Material Co., Ltd. and Nautilus Investment Co., Ltd., and Shenzhen Dafenzi Technology Co., Ltd. appears as the third party from the first-instance proceedings. No case number was disclosed in the...
As of October 1, 2025, South Korea elevated the former Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) to the Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP), giving intellectual property a visibly higher place in the state architecture. The point is not the new acronym. The real story is that Korea is treating intellectual property less as a back-office registration function and more as part of industrial strategy, innovation policy, and national dispute readiness.That said, the reform should not be overstated. According to MOIP’s public FAQ, copyright matters remain under the Ministry of Culture,...
South Africa’s Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) has now shifted case-related filing onto its Case Management System (CMS). In Customer Notice 30 of 2026, after launching CMS on 27 March 2026, CIPC said that from 31 May 2026 the designated email addresses previously used for complaints, statutory submissions, service of legal documents and related correspondence were permanently decommissioned, and that those matters must now be filed through the CMS portal as the sole official channel.This is more than a housekeeping update. For teams that still run complaint handling...
Ethiopia’s Intellectual Property Authority (EIPA) is moving forward with revisions to the country’s trademark registration and protection proclamation, according to an update published by Adams & Adams on 16 July 2026. Addis Ababa University prepared the draft amendments, which were discussed with stakeholders in June 2026. Adams & Adams submitted general comments addressing, among other issues, the alignment between implementing regulations and the primary legislation, application formalities and the clarity of procedural requirements.The reform remains under consultation, but the...
By late June and early July 2026, the most important development in the UAE trade mark system is not a single statutory amendment. It is the way several practice signals are now lining up: the Ministry’s “One Day TM” initiative and one-day examination are no longer abstract policy language; the 50% fee relief for National Programme SMEs has made cost planning more material at filing stage; and dispute practice is showing less patience for filings that look like tactical blocking rather than genuine brand adoption.Taken separately, these look like changes in fees, procedure and...
