IPONZ and New Zealand’s Ministry of Business have now pushed trade mark infringement and digital platform governance into the same practical frame, and that matters for more than headline value. The key shift is not simply that platforms are mentioned more explicitly. It is that rights verification is being moved earlier in the enforcement chain. The new rapid protection mechanism for domestic and cross-border e-commerce platforms is designed to help platforms identify the rights basis faster, reduce hesitation after a complaint arrives, and move obviously high-risk listings, stores or...

On 24 June, Thailand’s Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) said it had removed or suspended 1,322 suspected trademark and copyright listings from online platforms in the first five months of 2026, while related enforcement led to 116 cases and 224,042 seized items at storage and warehouse points. The more important signal was rhetorical as much as operational: the DIP is no longer describing online infringement as a simple takedown problem, but as a chain that runs from platform data to upstream supply nodes.A few weeks earlier, Thai media personality DJ Nui pushed a different issue...

On 24 June 2026, Thailand’s Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) signalled a sharper enforcement model for online counterfeiting. Working with Meta Thailand and other platform stakeholders, the agency is no longer framing the issue as a simple takedown exercise. The emphasis has moved toward automated detection, digital intelligence and source-tracing that can connect anonymous online sellers to warehouses and offline supply points.The timing matters. Thailand’s B2C e-commerce market reached 970 billion baht in 2025 and is projected to grow to 1.8 trillion baht by 2030. Against that...

The EUIPO Observatory has published its 2025 annual monitoring report on online advertising on IPR-infringing websites and apps, and the numbers are difficult to dismiss. Across 5,671 monitored websites, 37% were classified as illegal and 63% as high-risk; estimated worldwide ad revenue for those websites reached EUR 382 million in 2025. The report also identified 61,628 unique advertisers on monitored websites, including 4,778 Major Brands.What makes this development more than another anti-piracy headline is that the ad money is still coming from the mainstream market. Legitimate...

The latest signals from WIPO’s 18th session of the Advisory Committee on Enforcement are more consequential than they first appear. WIPO’s official meeting pages confirm that ACE 18 in Geneva devoted substantial attention to digital piracy, intermediary responsibility, online blocking tools and AI-enabled enforcement, while the South Centre’s June 2026 statement argued that IP enforcement must remain development-oriented, proportionate and consistent with TRIPS flexibilities. Read together, those messages point to a sharper political divide over how far copyright enforcement in the digital...

Recent JPO guidance and examination practice mean virtual 3D assets in Japan can no longer be treated as one undifferentiated bucket of “digital content.” Digital fashion items, scene models, tradable spatial decorations and service-linked 3D displays may all live inside virtual environments, but that does not mean they travel through the same legal door. For some assets, copyright may still be the more natural starting point. For others, the more important question is whether the current Design Act framework offers a cleaner and more enforceable route.The real shift is not academic. It...

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...

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...

Japan is starting to give the market a more workable answer on a question that has been hanging over virtual worlds for years: not every 3D digital asset in immersive spaces can safely rely on copyright alone. Virtual garments, architectural structures and other usable-looking assets may still qualify for copyright in some cases, but once the object looks less like pure artistic expression and more like a commercially exploitable design, rights holders may need to lean on the revised Design Act and adjacent enforcement tools instead.The practical significance goes beyond classification. For...

A case brief circulated this week by the EUIPO’s anti-infringement centre suggests that the EU’s enforcement playbook is shifting earlier in the chain. According to the account, infringers were no longer relying on one fake sign used repeatedly. Instead, they used generative AI to produce thousands of text-and-image trade mark variants at speed, trying to slip past keyword-based filters before distributing goods across Europe through fragmented cross-border small parcels. The policy response was just as notable: EUIPO said it would flag unusually frequent trade mark variant filings with no...

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 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,...

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...

CIPC’s latest filing notice turns what many teams used to treat as routine document handling into a hard front-end compliance issue. The message is not subtle: scanned documents must be black and white and legible; one application may not be split across multiple emails; files over 10MB will be rejected; only standard PDF and TIFF formats are accepted; and CIPC will not download applications or parts of applications from other sites such as Google.The practical impact is bigger than the technical wording suggests. This is not simply a cleaner-scanning campaign. It shifts risk to the moment...

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...

China’s National Copyright Administration released a draft revision of the Regulations for the Implementation of the Copyright Law for public comment on 13 July 2026, with submissions due by 12 August. The current regulations have not been revised since 2013. The draft would expand the text from 38 to 49 articles, align it with the 2020 Copyright Law amendments, broaden the definition of performers, refine rules on accessible-format copies, and introduce a more detailed framework for technological protection measures and rights-management information in Articles 43–46.For content...

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...

The UAE government’s 1 May 2026 update on intellectual property enforcement puts online infringement in sharper focus. Look-alike packaging on social media and e-commerce platforms, unauthorised use of product images, and fake brand accounts are now framed as issues for faster takedown action and administrative penalties, with telecom regulators expected to support a more coordinated response.The second message is practical: customs and police cooperation is becoming more evidence-driven. Dubai Customs and law enforcement are tightening the chain of evidence across import, storage and...

Israel has recently updated the application of its Extension of Periods and Postponement of Deadlines Law in response to the regional situation, giving temporary breathing room for selected regulatory approvals and certain administrative time limits. For IP owners and representatives, the relief may help where filings, responses or supporting documents are affected by disrupted operations. It should not be treated as a blanket extension, however. The competent authority, including the Israel Patent Office in relevant matters, may still shorten or remove the relief depending on the facts of...