Insights

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.

On 30 July 2026, UAE legal practitioners issued updated brand-protection guidance that shifts the focus from obtaining a trademark certificate to building an enforcement system around it. Registration with the Ministry of Economy remains the legal foundation, but the guidance stresses that it may not be enough against counterfeit imports, unauthorised marketplace sellers and rapidly changing digital listings. Rights holders are therefore encouraged to record their marks with customs authorities across the relevant emirates and to use the official registration certificate to enrol in tools such as Amazon Brand Registry.

The practical point is straightforward: customs recordal can help stop suspect goods at the physical border, while platform registration can activate automated monitoring, predictive protection and faster takedown channels online. Brands facing bad-faith filings or repeated marketplace infringement should align ownership records, customs documents, platform accounts and evidence-retention procedures before a dispute arises. Treating enforcement as a sequence of isolated complaints is increasingly too slow for sellers that can relist, switch storefronts or reroute stock within days.

This article updates our report of 27 July, “Saudi Arabia to Join the Madrid System in October 2026”.

WIPO confirmed in Information Notice No. 35/2026 that Saudi Arabia deposited its instrument of accession to the Madrid Protocol on 8 July 2026. The Protocol will enter into force for the Kingdom on 8 October 2026, allowing trademark owners from other Madrid System members to designate Saudi Arabia in an international application or subsequent designation. Saudi Arabia becomes the fifth Gulf Cooperation Council state to join the system, with Kuwait remaining outside it. The Kingdom has opted for an 18-month time limit for provisional refusals, subject to the Madrid Protocol’s opposition-related exception, and will apply individual fees for designations and renewals.

The practical gain lies mainly in simplifying the filing route. Brand owners will generally no longer need to begin protection through a separate Saudi national application, which can reduce the early-stage burden of preparing legalized powers of attorney and appointing local counsel solely to file. SAIP will still examine each designation under Saudi law, and a local representative may remain necessary if a provisional refusal, opposition or other domestic procedure arises. Companies planning Middle East expansion should therefore review their basic marks, goods and services wording and filing budgets before 8 October rather than treating a Madrid designation as automatic registration.

A development reported on 30 July 2026 indicates that Thailand’s Department of Intellectual Property (DIP) and Customs Department have completed a new digital upgrade to the country’s customs IP recordation framework. The shift is aimed less at conventional container inspections and more at postal parcels and express-delivery channels, with partial logistics-data alerts reportedly linked to platforms such as Lazada and Shopee and AI-assisted screening used to flag suspected counterfeit goods and pirated merchandise.

The operational value of the upgrade will depend on the quality of rights-holder records, product-identification materials and the actual scope of platform data sharing. Brand owners and copyright holders selling into Thailand should therefore review their customs filings, authorisation chains and genuine-product indicators rather than concentrating only on large consignments. Fragmented, high-frequency e-commerce parcels are becoming a central border-enforcement problem, and effective recordation will increasingly determine whether automated risk screening produces usable leads.

According to information released on 31 July 2026, the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam (IP Vietnam) published its first three representative cases in which trademark registrations were successfully invalidated on bad-faith grounds. The move appears to mark a more concrete stage in the application of Vietnam’s amended IP Law and also comes amid continuing US scrutiny of bad-faith trademark registrations in the country.

The practical importance lies less in the number of cases than in the evidentiary direction they provide. Foreign brand owners may now have a clearer basis for relying on an applicant’s prior dealings, knowledge of the mark, filing pattern and other surrounding conduct, rather than depending almost entirely on proof of local well-known status. That may lower the evidentiary burden in some opposition and invalidation actions, but it does not remove the need for a disciplined record: companies should still preserve commercial correspondence, evidence of earlier use, distribution records and facts showing how the applicant became aware of the mark.

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.

Under joint guidelines issued on 28 July 2026, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) introduced a 72-hour notice-and-takedown standard for social media and e-commerce platforms handling deepfake infringement, voice cloning and AI-derived content based on protected works. The move places AIGC-related complaints more clearly within platform copyright governance and gives rights holders and intermediaries a more consistent timetable for notices, verification and removal.

The deadline is likely to push platforms to move copyright complaints out of ordinary customer-service queues and into auditable compliance workflows. Speed, however, should not replace evidentiary discipline: notices still need to identify the protected work, the location of the disputed content and the way AI was used to reproduce or transform it. Platforms should preserve records of review, removal and appeal, while watching for further detail on valid-notice requirements, platform scope and implementation.