In early May, the Vietnamese government stepped up its explanation and implementation messaging around Decree No. 134/2026/ND-CP, which took effect on 9 April 2026. The decree amends Decree No. 17/2023/ND-CP and gives more detailed treatment to AI-assisted creation, the use of protected text and data for AI training, rights-reservation mechanisms, and the responsibilities of intermediary services and digital content platforms. For generative AI providers, content platforms and businesses using AI-generated material, the compliance question is moving beyond a simple AI label.The practical...

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...

On 30 July 2026, UAE legal practitioners issued updated brand-protection guidance that shifts the focus from obtaining a trademark certificate to building an enforcement system around it. Registration with the Ministry of Economy remains the legal foundation, but the guidance stresses that it may not be enough against counterfeit imports, unauthorised marketplace sellers and rapidly changing digital listings. Rights holders are therefore encouraged to record their marks with customs authorities across the relevant emirates and to use the official registration certificate to enrol in tools...

Developments dated 10 September 2026 indicate that the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO) and the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) have introduced a new framework aimed at online trademark squatting and counterfeiting, while placing more direct compliance duties on major e-commerce platforms. Where a mark is officially identified by MyIPO as a bad-faith trademark, platforms such as Shopee, Lazada Malaysia and TikTok Shop are expected not only to remove related listings but also to operate a blacklist mechanism that can restrict or shut down local stores using...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

The EUIPO Observatory has announced that Agorateka, its gateway for directing users to legal online content, now covers all 27 EU Member States. The portal’s purpose is straightforward: help consumers find lawful sources for music, films, games, books, sports and other protected content, reducing the default visibility of pirate services. In the EU’s wider digital enforcement landscape, however, full coverage matters. Once legal access points are mapped across the Union, platforms, advertising networks and enforcement bodies can compare unauthorised content distribution with available...

The African Intellectual Property Organisation (OAPI) has put forward a draft Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market and E-Commerce Platform Liability, according to the policy outline now under discussion. The proposal moves beyond conventional copyright administration and focuses on how online marketplaces and digital platforms should respond when infringing goods or unauthorised digital content circulate through their services.The draft would seek to harmonise the regulatory approach across OAPI member states and introduce a “Notice and Stay-down” obligation for platforms. If...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Two copyright developments from 17 June deserve to be read together rather than separately. Uganda has formally passed its Copyright and Neighbouring Rights (Amendment) Bill, tightening penalties for digital infringement and piracy while placing stronger oversight on the collection and distribution of platform royalties. In Tunisia, the parliamentary legislative committee approved amendments to the national copyright law that would incorporate the Marrakesh Treaty’s copyright exceptions for blind and print-disabled persons into domestic law.They move in different directions, but the policy...