Insights

At a cross-border patent revocation hearing that concluded on 31 July 2026, the Unified Patent Court appeared sceptical that vast quantities of material generated by large language models and predictive systems could, by themselves, serve as decisive prior art against novelty. According to the hearing indications described, the court focused on whether the alleged disclosures were genuinely available before the priority date, supported by real technical work, and sufficiently enabling for a skilled person to put the claimed subject matter into practice. Purely theoretical combinations produced through algorithmic enumeration may therefore carry limited weight where they lack a credible route to implementation or reproducible validation.

The hearing stance should not be read as a categorical rule that AI-generated material can never qualify as prior art; the court’s formal position will depend on the written decision and the facts of the case. The practical message is narrower but important: a revocation claimant will need more than volume, plausibility or textual similarity. It must establish public availability, authenticity and technical enablement at the relevant date. Patent owners facing this type of attack should test the evidence on those points rather than treating the generated output as a conventional disclosure. AI can expand the search universe quickly, but it does not remove the legal and technical conditions for a novelty-destroying reference.

Editor’s note (24 September 2026): as of publication we have not located an official announcement of the measures described below; this article is based on industry briefings and is subject to official confirmation.

On 29 July 2026, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) issued supplementary examination guidance for large language models and generative AI inventions, formally bringing training-data compliance into the patent review process. Where an AI model has been pre-trained or fine-tuned on copyright-protected datasets, applicants are expected to include a declaration addressing the legality of the data source. The guidance also introduces an initial “data source whitelist” covering several trusted open-source datasets; applications that clearly rely on listed datasets may avoid an additional copyright review and qualify for a priority examination route.

The practical effect is to move data provenance from a back-office governance issue into the drafting and filing strategy itself. The whitelist could reduce friction, but its value will depend on scope, update frequency and day-to-day examination practice. Applicants should therefore preserve licence terms, dataset versions, acquisition records and internal use logs before filing, rather than trying to reconstruct the evidence during prosecution.

Indonesia’s Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP) moved to the fee and procedural framework under Government Regulation No. 30/2026 on 1 August 2026, alongside an updated electronic filing portal. The change affects official fees and selected examination timelines across patent and trademark procedures. New filings, renewals, recordals and other transactions submitted from the cutover date are charged under the revised schedule, with increases of close to 50% for some items.

The transition guidance gives a narrow reprieve to billing codes generated on or before 31 July but not yet paid: the former fee may still apply if payment is completed before the code expires. Once a code lapses, a new code will generally need to be issued under the revised rates. Applicants should therefore review all unpaid codes immediately, confirm expiry dates and revisit budgets for accelerated examination and other patent or trademark steps. The practical issue is not only higher cost, but also tighter control over payment timing and internal filing instructions.

On 31 July 2026, the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property (SAIP) issued a dedicated report on intellectual property protection for the esports and gaming sector, alongside the Esports World Cup in Riyadh. The report separates a game into distinct protectable assets: source code and underlying scripts may fall under copyright, user interfaces and character models may qualify for industrial design protection, interactive technologies and hardware innovations may support patent filings, while names, event identities and commercial signs remain within the trademark system. For creators, developers and investors, the practical message is clear: protection should be built as a portfolio rather than around a single right.

The report also gives prominent attention to digital piracy, online dissemination and evidentiary challenges, signalling a compliance and enforcement agenda that runs in parallel with sector promotion. The difficult part will not be identifying possible rights, but documenting ownership and preserving evidence across development cycles. Version histories, code repositories, design iterations and licensing records will often determine whether the framework works in practice. Companies active in Saudi Arabia should therefore review development, publishing, platform and tournament agreements before disputes arise.

At the SIARC 2026 high-level programme held from 28 to 30 July 2026, OAPI Director General Denis Bohoussou announced a patent fee support scheme for applicants meeting specified conditions. Under the announced terms, patent registration-related charges would fall from CFA 1,000,000 to CFA 22,500, a reduction of 97.75%, while OAPI would cover 80% of annual maintenance fees for the first five years after grant. OAPI also issued Official Industrial Property Bulletin No. 10DM/2026 on 30 July, adding a fresh set of published rights and procedural notices to the week’s institutional developments.

If implemented on the announced basis, the measure could materially lower the entry cost for inventors, start-ups and research commercialisation projects seeking protection across OAPI member states. The CFA 22,500 figure should not yet be treated as an automatic rate for every applicant: eligibility, filing routes, subsidy approval and the mechanics of the annuity contribution will depend on formal implementing rules. Applicants considering OAPI protection should therefore review qualification criteria and long-term maintenance budgets, while also checking Bulletin 10DM/2026 for newly published applications and rights-status information.

A review of filing practice at the end of July 2026 points to tighter digital controls across parts of Africa’s IP and corporate-registration infrastructure. South Africa’s Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) requires scanned documents to be submitted in clear black-and-white format, while its case-management system has replaced email for certain complaints, statutory filings and service of legal documents. At ARIPO, the 2026 edition of the Banjul Protocol rules applies from 1 March: oppositions must be filed within three months of publication, that period is not extendable, and the fee for transmitting a notice of opposition is USD 100.

This is not evidence of a single continent-wide “system migration audit,” but the practical direction is clear: format, channel, payment and timing rules are increasingly enforced at the portal level rather than repaired manually after filing. Applicants and representatives should validate file specifications, portal routing, payment steps and electronic receipts before submission. The current ARIPO opposition period is three months; a missed deadline or defective fee step may determine whether the opposition is treated as validly filed.