Insights

This article updates our report of 27 July, “Saudi Copyright Reform Rewrites AI Training and Platform Liability”.

Saudi Arabia’s new Copyright Law is due to take effect on 12 August 2026, replacing the 2003 regime. Based on Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property (SAIP) materials and pre-effective-date compliance alerts, the reform brings AI training, software licensing and online content distribution into a more explicit copyright framework. The provision drawing the closest attention from technology businesses is a statutory AI-training exception, under which certain data scraping and copying for algorithm development may be permitted when specified safeguards, including protection of right holders’ interests, are satisfied.

The law also gives clearer legal force to click-wrap and shrink-wrap end-user licence agreements and brings streaming distribution within the scope of the making-available right. Companies operating AI products, software, SaaS or content platforms in Saudi Arabia should therefore treat 12 August as a practical review point for data provenance, training workflows, EULA presentation and content-licensing chains. The AI exception creates useful room for development, but its conditions matter; it should not be read as a blanket copyright exemption for training datasets.

Regional IP industry briefings published on 5 August 2026 point to a concentrated round of reform across the Middle East, spanning design classification, trademark border enforcement and examination practice. The United Arab Emirates is approaching the effective stage of its accession to the Locarno Agreement, prompting practitioners to assess how fuller use of the international design classification system may standardise cross-border filing practice. In Saudi Arabia, the recently introduced Tahaqaq digital platform is bringing customs trademark enforcement and registered-rights information into a more connected workflow, giving brand owners a new tool for anti-counterfeiting work.

Iraq, Palestine and other jurisdictions are also reporting procedural and examination updates that appear to move parts of regional practice closer to more developed GCC standards. The practical message is broader than any single rule change. Businesses filing designs should review classification and portfolio consistency earlier, while trademark owners may need to connect registration data, customs measures and digital enforcement processes rather than manage them separately. Greater regional alignment can reduce some friction, but effective dates, platform procedures and examination details remain jurisdiction-specific; a single Middle East playbook would still be premature.

The 2026 amendments to ARIPO’s Banjul Protocol took effect on 1 March, but the operational impact is becoming clearer as practitioners work under the revised framework. Two points now deserve particular attention in portfolio management. Designated states have a six-month window to communicate acceptance, conditional acceptance or refusal following substantive examination, with an application deemed accepted where no communication is made within the prescribed period. That shorter timetable changes how applicants and counsel should monitor national-stage developments across ARIPO designations.

Cost control has also become more granular. Under the 2026 fee schedule, a list of goods exceeding 50 words in a class attracts an additional US$10 for each word beyond that threshold. Long specifications copied from other filing systems can therefore create unexpectedly large surcharges. The practical response should not be indiscriminate shortening: applicants need to review classification, commercial coverage and word count together before filing. ARIPO’s latest rules are now less a technical amendment than a day-to-day discipline in deadline tracking and specification drafting.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has published a final rule that will take effect on 13 August 2026 and apply to petitions filed on or after that date. Requests involving abandoned patent applications, patents expired for non-payment of maintenance fees, delayed priority or benefit claims, and certain missed Hague international design deadlines will face added scrutiny once the delay exceeds one year. Petitioners will need to explain the circumstances in detail and show that the entire period of delay was unintentional; the previous threshold for this additional showing was two years.

The rule does not remove the possibility of reinstatement or increase the existing fee amounts, but it moves both the higher petition-fee tier and the more demanding evidentiary threshold forward by a full year. In practice, one year now becomes a sharper risk boundary. Rights holders should review abandoned files, maintenance-fee lapses and broken priority chains early, while preserving docket records, internal correspondence, staffing changes and the timeline of corrective action. A petition assembled long after the event is far harder to support with a coherent record.

On 30 July 2026, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued an official notice designating the severe earthquake that struck Japan on 28 July as an “extraordinary situation” under 37 CFR 1.183, 2.146(a)(5) and 2.148. Depending on the proceeding, affected patent and trademark applicants, patent owners, reexamination parties and trademark registrants may request measures such as restarting an unexpired response period, waiving certain petition fees or maintenance-fee surcharges, or obtaining relief from delays caused by the disaster. For trademark matters, the notice also provides for reissuance of unanswered Office communications and, in eligible cases, refunds of petition fees paid to revive an application or reinstate a registration.

The relief is not automatic and does not suspend every deadline. Affected parties generally must file a specific request, explain how the earthquake caused the delay and include a copy of the USPTO notice; some patent-related remedies also carry a defined filing cut-off. Statutory deadlines and statutory requirements remain outside the scope of the notice unless the law itself permits relief. The practical task is therefore to separate Office-set periods from deadlines fixed by statute, then confirm the correct filing route before relying on the emergency measures.

Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) announced on 24 July that DIRMA will hold a public stakeholder meeting on 19 August 2026, with in-person and online participation. One agenda item is the presentation and discussion of revised registrability criteria for position marks, following the close of the related public consultation on 24 July. The direction disclosed by INPI is to assess the sign, its clearly defined placement and the relevant public’s perception of that combination, rather than treating the position in isolation. The final approach should still be checked against the meeting materials and any subsequent formal text.

Acquired distinctiveness is not a mechanism that begins only on 19 August: INPI has already completed consultation work and adjusted its trademark examination framework through measures adopted in 2025. Read together, the two developments point toward heavier reliance on market perception and evidence of use in Brazilian trademark examination. Applicants for non-traditional marks should start organising consistent depictions of the claimed position, duration and geographic scope of use, advertising expenditure, sales materials, surveys and media references. A coherent evidentiary record tied to the relevant goods or services may matter more than arguments based solely on visual originality.