Insights

Korea's Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP) opened a legislative notice on 21 September for a proposed partial amendment to the Enforcement Rule of the Design Protection Act, with comments invited until 2 November. The proposal would substantially reduce the material required for typeface design applications: for Hangul typefaces, designated characters would fall from 500 to 209 and drawings from five to two; for Chinese-character typefaces, designated characters would fall from 900 to 310 and drawings from nine to two. MOIP says the change is intended to retain the structural information needed to identify design features while removing duplication, easing applicants' drafting burden and reducing corrections or supplements during filing and examination.

The proposal would also strengthen guidance on compatibility checks before 3D drawings are filed. Applicants should confirm that a 3D model displays correctly in the viewer used for examination; if a file cannot be opened or parts of the design do not display properly, another 3D file or 2D drawings may be used instead. J&C recommends adding examiner-side rendering to the pre-filing checklist whenever 3D files are used for Korean design applications and keeping a workable 2D fallback. The amendment is still at the legislative-notice stage and will require further legal review and promulgation before taking effect, so the final text and effective date should be checked against the formal rules.

Using the same pair of terminals for presence detection and power supply supported inventive step in EPO appeal T 1718/23, concerning an electronic vapour device. The Board found no reason, without hindsight, to replace the prior art’s separate detection path with detection through the power line. Its decision of 16 July 2026, published online on 14 September, dismissed the appeals of the proprietor and opponent 1, leaving the patent maintained in amended form under auxiliary request 7A. The main request and auxiliary request 1 lacked novelty, while request 7 contained an impermissible intermediate generalisation.

The outcome does not make every reduction in components inventive. J&C recommends documenting the structural change, the functions retained and the resulting technical effect, then explaining why the prior art would not prompt that particular modification. Request management also mattered: requests 2 to 6 were not admitted after their order was changed on appeal, and requests 4A to 6A should have been filed at first instance. Proprietors should settle their fallback claims, ranking and disclosure support during opposition rather than assume that appeal will provide a fresh opportunity to reorganise them.

In a published opinion issued on 16 September 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the DMCA copyright-management-information claim in Doe v. GitHub. Based on the complaint’s description of Copilot and Codex, the court treated their output as newly generated work that had never carried the information, rather than copies of existing works from which copyright management information (CMI) had been removed or altered. Similarity to source code and missing attribution therefore did not suffice on the pleaded output theory. The decision is not a general exemption for AI coding tools: the alternative training-input theory was forfeited, two contract claims remain pending, and the court expressed no view on whether the output infringes copyright.

The court also rejected literal identicality as an independent DMCA requirement; substantial reproduction without CMI may still provide strong circumstantial evidence of removal. JCIPO recommends reviewing code provenance, duplicate-code filters and open-source licence scanning, while retaining records of tool settings, outputs and subsequent processing. Rights holders should distinguish CMI removal, copyright infringement and licence breaches, and preserve evidence of the existing copy, the information it carried and how that information was removed or altered. Missing attribution alone does not establish the same legal claim in every case.

Businesses recording a transfer of a registered trademark in Indonesia need to check how the supporting evidence has been translated. Article 66 of Minister of Law Regulation No. 5 of 2026 requires an Indonesian translation by an official sworn translator when the transfer evidence is in a foreign language. The filing also calls for the trademark certificate or an official register extract, applicant identification and, where applicable, corporate documents for the transferee and a power of attorney. This is a reminder of an existing procedural requirement; it does not establish a recent blanket obligation to use electronic Apostilles for all IP transfers and licences.

Translation should be planned alongside signing and completion of a cross-border trademark transaction. JCIPO recommends checking the original transfer evidence against the sworn Indonesian translation and the parties’ recorded details, while asking local counsel to confirm any notarisation or Apostille requirements for the particular documents. Authentication, translation and electronic filing serve different purposes. Successfully uploading a document does not by itself establish that its formal requirements have been met.

A private sale did not give NCS the protection it claimed against later prior art, the US Federal Circuit held on 14 September 2026 in NCS Multistage v. Nine Energy Service. NCS had supplied its AirLock device to one customer inside a sealed black tube that required cutting open. The record did not show that the public could learn the relevant features of the invention. That sale therefore failed to satisfy the public-disclosure exception in 35 U.S.C. §102(b)(1)(B), leaving TCO’s later sale to Apache and Apache’s use as prior art. The court also corrected claim construction, vacated the infringement, no-invalidity and damages judgments, and remanded for a new trial; it did not itself hold the patent invalid.

For businesses, an earlier commercial transaction is not automatically a shield against intervening prior art. Nor does the absence of a confidentiality agreement establish that technical information reached the public. JCIPO recommends maintaining separate evidence of sale dates, recipients, public access and the technical subject matter actually disclosed when coordinating customer trials and US patent filings. An order or delivery record may establish a transaction without demonstrating the disclosure needed for this particular exception.

Brazil’s INPI confirmed on 16 September 2026 that the second version of its Patent Services Module is available. National applications and PCT national-phase entry, under service code 200, can now be filed through a workflow integrating the application form with GRU fee-slip generation and online payment. A separate preliminary visit to PAG is unnecessary when using this route. The module also supports annual-fee slips and payments. Migration remains gradual: PAG and the previous electronic filing system are still available, and previously issued slips remain valid.

The operational benefit depends on keeping filing and payment records aligned across the available channels. JCIPO recommends checking the service, applicant, amount and payment status for each new filing, national-phase entry and annual-fee task, while retaining both filing acknowledgements and payment evidence. This helps avoid duplicate slips or payments during migration. INPI’s filing FAQ says the payment due-date rule is unchanged: the system indicates payment by the filing day and checks it electronically with the banking network. Completing a form or generating a slip should therefore not be treated as proof that the procedure is complete.