Insights

This article updates our report of 2 August, “Saudi Arabia Joins the Madrid System from 8 October”.

WIPO Information Notice No. 35/2026 confirms that Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Madrid Protocol will take effect on October 8, 2026, and sets out several procedural points for designations of the Kingdom. Most importantly for filing practice, Saudi Arabia has declared an 18-month time limit for notifying provisional refusals rather than the standard one-year period; refusals based on opposition may, in specified circumstances, be notified after that period. Saudi Arabia will also apply individual fees to designations, subsequent designations and renewals, although the amounts were not published in this notice and are to be announced separately by WIPO.

Applicants planning to use the Madrid System for Saudi protection should therefore avoid treating the 12-month mark as the point at which examination risk has largely cleared. Another practical constraint is equally important: because Saudi law does not provide for the relevant mechanism, SAIP will not transmit requests to divide an international registration in respect of Saudi Arabia, nor requests to merge international registrations resulting from such a division. Madrid membership will make the filing route more convenient, but it will not remove local procedural differences; fee planning, prosecution timelines and goods-and-services strategy still need a Saudi-specific check.

This article updates our report of 5 July, “Israel Reaffirms a Hard 30-Month PCT Deadline as Fees Shift”.

The latest WIPO PCT Applicant’s Guide continues to list Israel’s national phase deadline at 30 months from the priority date under both PCT Articles 22 and 39. Unlike jurisdictions that routinely allow entry at 31 months, Israel does not offer that extra month as a standard filing window. Where the 30-month deadline is missed, a request for restoration may be available under PCT Rule 49.6, but the Israel Patent Office applies a “due care” standard and the circumstances must be properly substantiated. For applicants managing cross-border instructions amid recent regional disruption, the safer operational assumption is simple: treat the Israeli 30-month date as a hard docketing deadline rather than relying on post-deadline relief.

WIPO has also updated the equivalent amounts of the international search fee charged by the Israel Patent Office in its capacity as an International Searching Authority. From 1 July 2026, the listed equivalents include EUR 1,241 and USD 1,446, alongside CHF 1,064 and ILS 4,203 in the latest guide. The practical point is that timing and cost controls now deserve to be reviewed together: applicants planning Israeli national phase entry should leave enough margin for local instructions, translations, signatures and payment, while also checking the current PCT fee table instead of carrying over assumptions from jurisdictions with 31-month entry practice.

WIPO records show that Bahrain acceded to the Locarno Agreement Establishing an International Classification for Industrial Designs on 29 July 2026, with the treaty entering into force for Bahrain on 29 October 2026. The move follows the United Arab Emirates, which acceded on 6 July and will be bound from 6 October. Taken together, the two accessions point to a clearer Gulf trend toward using the same international classification framework for industrial designs.

For applicants, the practical benefit is greater consistency in classification, searching and portfolio administration across markets, rather than immediate harmonization of substantive design law. National filing requirements, examination practice and scope of protection still need to be checked country by country. The Locarno Agreement standardizes classification, while the Hague System provides an international registration route; they solve different problems. If Gulf states continue aligning on both fronts, regional design filing may become easier to manage, but applicants should not treat the shift as a substitute for jurisdiction-specific compliance.

The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) announced on 14 August 2026 that it will resume accepting new requests under SG Patents Fast and SG Trade Marks Fast from 1 September. Both routes had stopped taking new acceleration requests on 4 January while IPOS reviewed the programmes and reassessed internal resource allocation. Applicants and agents planning accelerated filings should consult Patents Circular No. 5/2026 and Trade Marks Circular No. 3/2026 for the detailed operational requirements.

The reopening restores a useful planning option for businesses working toward product launches, financing rounds, licensing deals or brand roll-outs where earlier certainty can matter. It should not, however, be treated as automatic acceleration: eligibility and filing mechanics still need to be checked case by case. A sensible approach is to review candidate matters before 1 September and align filing dates, fees and response resources in advance rather than wait until the channels reopen.

On 12 August 2026, the China National Intellectual Property Administration’s Trademark Office released the first five representative cases handled through its fast-track route for trademark oppositions and invalidations, together with an electronic evidence preparation guide. According to the information provided, the selected matters moved from filing to an opposition or invalidation decision in roughly 3.5 to 4 months. The guidance also gives practitioners a clearer picture of what can support accelerated handling: e-commerce sales records carrying trusted timestamps and citation search reports that match the system’s bad-faith squatting blacklist may, where the case qualifies, allow examiners to dispense with parts of the conventional evidence-challenge process and reach a decision more quickly.

The practical significance lies less in the headline processing time than in the way fast-track eligibility is being tied to evidence quality and verifiability. Brand owners and counsel should treat preservation of platform sales data, timestamped records, historical use materials and searches on suspected squatters as part of routine enforcement preparation rather than evidence to be assembled only after a dispute starts. The route is not an automatic shortcut for every bad-faith filing, but clearer evidence standards make front-loaded, machine-verifiable documentation increasingly important to whether a case can actually benefit from accelerated review.

On 13 August 2026, IP Australia updated its patent examination practice to give a more detailed and broader reading of technologies that may qualify for accelerated examination on environmental grounds. The scope is no longer framed only around conventional green hardware such as solar equipment or battery materials: smart-grid technologies, carbon-footprint accounting and AI-based energy optimisation software aimed at reducing data-centre power consumption are now being treated as part of the green-technology fast-track landscape. IP Australia’s current examination manual already recognises environmentally beneficial “green technologies” as a non-exhaustive ground for requesting expedited examination.

For AI and software applicants, the practical shift is that the environmental benefit of the claimed technology matters more than whether the invention is embodied in traditional clean-tech hardware. Applications involving data-centre energy scheduling, grid-load optimisation or carbon calculations should therefore explain the technical system in which the algorithm operates, the mechanism by which energy use or emissions are reduced, and how that effect can be measured. Fast-track treatment does not displace ordinary examination of patentable subject matter, novelty or inventive step, but it may give energy-efficient AI projects an earlier Australian examination outcome and a useful timing advantage for international prosecution, licensing or investment planning.