Thailand’s Department of Intellectual Property has signalled this week, in its response to the 2026 U.S. Special 301 Report, that the draft amendment to the Patent Act has moved into the final accelerated stage of legislation. Thailand remains on the U.S. intellectual property Watch List, but the reform message is now more practical than political: companies filing patents, designs or technology-related matters in Thailand should revisit authorisation records, filing calendars and likely prosecution costs before the law changes rather than after.In Malaysia, MyIPO’s revised Guidelines of...

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 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...