UKIPO’s updated April 2026 guidance on non-use revocation, read together with a growing line of Tribunal decisions, is making life harder for proprietors trying to defend registrations with thin evidence. Formally, the latest trade mark-related entry in the published Tribunal Practice Notice list is still TPN 1/2024 from July 2024. In practice, however, the evidential line on genuine use has become more exacting. Platform screenshots, scattered sales records and transaction traces that do not land clearly on UK consumers are becoming much less persuasive when standing on their own.This...
On 9 July 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office used specialist audio-equipment cover maker ARB Covers to show how a small business can build intellectual property checks into product development before launch. The company has registered around 15 designs and secured trade mark protection for its brand, while also drawing on support from Business & IP Centres. The feature is not a change in the law. Its value lies in the practical message: a smaller business can start with a disciplined review of product appearance, branding and disclosure timing rather than treating IP as something...
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...
On 2 July, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) moved a practical question to the centre of design filing strategy: when an applicant submits visuals produced with generative AI, can it still show that a human being meaningfully shaped the final design? For applicants relying heavily on outputs from tools such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, that question is no longer theoretical. It now goes directly to filing resilience.The new guidance does not shut the door on AI-assisted design work. What it does is draw a firmer line around applications that look like “prompt in, image...
Around 26 June 2026, several IP authorities pushed a familiar fraud back into view: messages claiming that a third party is about to file the recipient’s brand in the UK or EU unless an urgent paid instruction is given first. IPOPHL specifically warned about a UK-based outfit calling itself “Crown Mark” and said it had no official relationship with that entity or with claims that it was linked to IP offices in the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Australia or the European Union.The important change is not simply that fake notices still exist. The script has become smarter. Instead of...
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...
The UK Intellectual Property Office has moved its patent digitisation project into a different phase. In its June 2026 update, the Office said that roughly three quarters of patent applications are now coming in through the new digital patents service launched to the public on 1 April. That matters less as a usage statistic than as a policy signal: Web Filing and the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. route for patent applications and requests are now on a published path toward retirement, with decommissioning to be completed no...
On 18 June 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office published two design decisions worth reading together: O/0497/26 and O/0464/26. The first, a detergent capsule invalidity fight, shows how little mileage a design owner may get from leaning on colour or a slightly different outer outline when the informed user still sees the same overall visual impression. The second, involving house-shaped planters, moves in the other direction: the fact that both products draw on the image of a house was not enough to collapse them into the same design. Porch treatment, roof presentation, window and...
Discussion around deferred publication of UK designs has moved faster than the official text. The headline figure catching everyone’s attention is 30 months. Yet the verified position is narrower: the current UK regime still allows deferment for up to 12 months, and the 2025 government consultation compared 12, 18 and 30-month models while signalling a preference for 18 months rather than an already launched 30-month pilot.Another point is no longer hypothetical. Since 1 April 2026, the DF2C fee to register a previously deferred design has been set at £50. For fast fashion and consumer...
The UK government has announced that several Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) fees applicable through the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) will change from 1 April 2026. Under the published schedule, the transmittal fee will be £100, the search fee £1,632, the international filing fee £1,242 for the first 30 pages, with an additional £14 for each page over 30, and the fee for restoration of priority will be £200. Reductions remain available for qualifying electronic filings.
On its face, this is a routine fee update. In practice, however, the announcement matters for much more than...
The UK Intellectual Property Office published its new guidance, How to spot fake fashion when shopping second-hand, on 27 May 2026 and followed it with a press release on 28 May as the resale fashion market continues to expand. Developed with support from Vinted, the guidance gives shoppers a more practical checklist for spotting suspicious pricing, seller behaviour, listing photos, verification services and payment methods. The IPO also said that one in four UK second-hand clothing buyers unknowingly bought a counterfeit online in the last year, while one in three do not check authenticity...
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...
Since 1 April 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office has raised official fees across patents, trade marks and designs, with the IPO describing the overall increase as averaging about 25%. The online fee for a UK trade mark application has moved from £170 to £205, while the patent search fee has risen from £150 to £200. This week the IPO also continued its transition messaging through fresh One IPO roadmap updates. The more consequential trade mark development, however, is that the government has confirmed the removal of the series marks service, while allowing existing registrations to...
The UK conversation around bad-faith stockpiling and “zombie” marks is not just a passing enforcement headline. The verifiable public materials point to a broader tightening. After SkyKick, UKIPO told examiners to look actively at specifications that are manifestly and self-evidently broad, and from 1 April 2026 the forms and fees for revocation and invalidation have also been updated. The practical message is that the UK system is becoming less tolerant of filings built to occupy space first and justify business use later.Across the Atlantic, the PTAB story should also be framed...
The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has updated its “Design forms and fees” page with effect from 1 April 2026 to reflect the forms and fees now applicable to UK design filings. The updated guidance makes the charging structure for registered designs easier to read in practice because it distinguishes not only between online and paper filing, but also between single and multiple applications. Under the current figures, an online single application costs £60. Online multiple applications are priced on a tiered basis: £85 for up to 10 designs, £110 for up to 20, £135 for up to 30,...
On 1 April 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) published “Patent factsheet: Accelerated processing”, setting out the main points in the UK patent timeline that can be sped up, including early search, combined search and substantive examination, accelerated search, accelerated publication, accelerated substantive examination, and early replies to examination reports. The page also makes two threshold points explicit: applicants need to pay the relevant fees for the steps they choose, and at least one claim must already have been filed. In practical terms, this turns...
On 31 March 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) published directions under section 66 of the Trade Marks Act 1994 to update the fee fields in a group of fee-bearing trade mark forms, with the directions taking effect on 1 April 2026. UKIPO also issued accompanying guidance explaining that the relevant fees are those prescribed by The Intellectual Property Fees (Miscellaneous Amendments, Revocation and Transitional Provisions) Rules 2026 (SI 2026/183).The Schedule shows that this is not a narrow form refresh affecting only one filing step. It reaches across applications,...
Trademark costs are moving up again in two important common-law jurisdictions, and the 2026 changes in the United Kingdom and Canada deserve closer attention than a simple fee table comparison. The UK Intellectual Property Office has confirmed that, from 1 April 2026, the online fee for filing a trade mark application will rise from £170 to £205, while the renewal fee will increase from £200 to £245. In Canada, the current CIPO official fee schedule shows that, from 1 January 2026, several trademark-related fees increased under the annual adjustment mechanism, including the online...
