Insights

On 9 October 2026 the US International Trade Commission (USITC) instituted investigation No. 337-TA-1526 (News Release 26-145), on a complaint by Vicor Corporation of the United States. The technology in dispute is vertical power delivery (VPD) — stacking power modules directly beneath high-current processors to shorten the power path — widely used to power data-centre server chips such as AI accelerators, GPUs and CPUs. Vicor asks the USITC to issue a limited exclusion order and cease-and-desist orders.

On 12 October 2026, through the Oman News Agency (ONA), the National Intellectual Property Office at Oman's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion (MoCIIP) set out the current rules for trademark registration and reminded businesses, entrepreneurs and designers to carry out a legal review before settling on a mark or a brand design. This is the authority clarifying existing rules in practice, not a change in the law.

On 12 October 2026 China's National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued Notice No. 692, placing 18 signs communicated by the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) under official-sign protection. The legal basis is Article 6ter of the Paris Convention and Article 10(1) of China's Trademark Law. The 18 signs are set out in two annexes: one for emblems, national flags and similar state signs, and one for the emblems, names and name abbreviations of intergovernmental organisations.

Thailand's Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) released its figures for the first nine months of 2026 on 12 October: new applications across the four industrial-property types — trademarks, invention patents, petty patents and industrial designs — totalled 61,288, up 9.59% year on year (55,923 in the same period of 2025). It is not a change in the law, but it puts Thailand's shifting demand for brand protection, patent strategy and copyright-asset management on clear display.

Broken down by type, trademarks remain by far the largest share:

In a retrial over the "Liu Fu" (六福) jewellery mark (case no. (2026) Zui Gao Fa Min Zai 51), China's Supreme People's Court reaffirmed that a business which knowingly registers a sign similar to another party's earlier, well-known trademark as its company trade name can commit unfair competition even if it always uses its full company name properly, as long as confusion remains likely (news). A jewellery company had registered "Jin Liu Fu Shang Mei" as its trade name; the retrial overturned a second-instance ruling that proper use of the full name was enough. For foreign brand owners, this matters because Chinese company names and Chinese trademarks are registered in separate systems, and a local company can end up with your brand, or its Chinese version, in its name.

On 5 October 2026, US software company TradeSun sued OpenAI in the Northern District of California, saying it has sold software under the name Astra since 2021 and that OpenAI's AI model of the same name will confuse customers. It asks for an injunction and damages (news). The complaint relies on "reverse confusion": a larger company arrives later and, with its reach, makes the public think the smaller prior user is the imitator. The case is at the pleading stage and the court has decided nothing. What happens when a bigger company uses your brand name in China? It depends mainly on whether your mark is registered there, and for which goods.