Insights

One of the most common ways this USPTO story is now described is also one of the least accurate. The Office did propose a major change in May 2024 that would have tied obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) and terminal disclaimer practice much more tightly together. Under that proposal, a patent linked through a terminal disclaimer could have faced serious enforceability consequences if a related patent in the chain ended up with a claim finally held unpatentable or invalid over prior art. But that proposal never became an effective final rule.

The date that matters is December 4, 2024. On that day, the USPTO formally withdrew the proposed rule. That means the issue should no longer be framed as a new rule that is already in force. Even so, the story is still worth close attention. The withdrawal restored the older legal framework, but it did not erase the policy concern behind the proposal. ODP, continuation-heavy filing strategies and terminal-disclaimer-linked portfolio design are all still very much alive as practical pressure points.

ARIPO is no longer treating online services as a platform that merely exists in the background. In May, its high-level mission to Mozambique was followed by publicly reported workshop activity in Maputo that put online filing, application tracking and online fee payment at the centre of the discussion. For a regional filing environment that has often depended on paper movement, fragmented touchpoints and slow status visibility, that is more than outreach. It is an attempt to change how users actually enter and manage the ARIPO route.

ARIPO’s own service pages already describe online filing, online payments, notifications and application tracking as core parts of the system, and they openly state that online applications receive a fee reduction. What matters now is that the Office appears to be pushing those tools harder into day-to-day use across member-state practice. Once that shift becomes routine, the practical effects will reach far beyond convenience. Filing pace, fee timing, watch strategy and adviser workflow all start to move with it.

Canada’s response to trademark squatting is becoming more operational. CIPO has recently articulated a more detailed practice approach to “bad faith,” spelling out the kinds of facts the TMOB is prepared to weigh in opposition and invalidity proceedings and making the analysis less abstract than it used to be.

The point is not that every broad or aggressive filing will now be branded abusive. The point is that a few recurring patterns are being brought into clearer focus: large-scale filings for marks identical or highly similar to well-known foreign brands, the absence of a genuine commercial plan to use the mark in Canada, and attempts to extract outsized assignment payments from the real brand owner. For rights holders, that changes how these cases should be built and argued.

The U.S. Copyright Office is pushing AI use in creative work out of the realm of vague disclosure and into something far more structured. Under its updated registration approach, applicants are expected to draw a clearer line between the parts of a work authored by a human and the parts generated by AI, whether the material is text, images, audio, or a mixed-format output.

The practical importance goes well beyond one more compliance step. Since 2023, the Office has required applicants to disclose more than a de minimis amount of AI-generated material and to describe the human author’s contribution. Where essential facts are omitted or misstated, a registration can be challenged, corrected, cancelled, or stripped of evidentiary value later in litigation. Once disclosure becomes more structured, filing strategy, recordkeeping, and claim drafting all become tighter.

Brazil’s INPI is continuing to streamline the handling path for international design filings that designate Brazil, with the interface between Hague System designations, local data intake and examination workflow becoming more efficient in practice. For applicants, the practical value is not just a shorter queue. It is a more predictable landing path in Brazil, especially when the filing strategy, titles and figure set are prepared carefully from the outset.

The more interesting shift is in how GUI and dynamic icon filings are being expressed. What is clearer in the public guidance is that dynamic graphical interfaces may be presented through a sequential set of figures, while contextual hardware elements such as device frames or housings can be shown in broken lines to make clear that protection is not being claimed for those parts. That is good news for software, consumer electronics and cross-border design teams, but it also raises the drafting standard: the sequence has to read as one visual movement, the title has to signal the dynamic feature, and the line between the claimed design and the contextual carrier has to be clean. For more ambitious media formats, applicants would still be wise to confirm the latest filing practice before relying on them.

“Just AI” is resurfacing in African IP debates not because it makes for a neat slogan, but because the policy direction is becoming harder to ignore. After the African Union adopted its Continental AI Strategy in 2024, high-level policy dialogue in 2025 continued to urge African states to develop AI laws, regulations and national frameworks suited to their own conditions. AI governance on the continent is moving from principle to institutional design.

That shift has pushed two older disputes back into view. One is South Africa’s earlier acceptance of a patent application naming DABUS as inventor: was that a meaningful doctrinal break, or mainly a sign of what a deposit-based patent system can leave unresolved? The other is whether generative AI training on copyrighted works could fit within fair use or fair dealing exceptions in some African jurisdictions, and whether local creators should be compensated when their works feed commercial models. The harder policy question now is not whether Africa should encourage AI, but how to do so without further weakening the bargaining position of African creators, publishers and cultural industries.