Insights

On 1 July 2026, EUIPO moves into phase two of the EU design reform. The practical headline for applicants is simple: a single design may be represented by one 3D object file or one animated object, rather than being forced back into a small set of static views. For product teams working with complex surfaces, digital interfaces, components or textured forms, that changes more than filing aesthetics. It changes how design intent is carried into the application itself.

What it does not yet justify is the market shorthand that EUIPO and WIPO’s Hague system are now fully linked for frictionless 3D transmission. Publicly available materials point in a more careful direction. WIPO Standard ST.92 now covers the electronic exchange of industrial design priority documents and allows 3D files to be included in the package, but EUIPO has also publicly indicated that applicants who expect to rely on a filing as a priority source may still consider static representations after 1 July 2026. Just as important, the Hague System does not require a “basic application” in the Madrid sense. The real issues are priority-document handling, consistency of representation and how different offices and platforms will read the material in practice.

Under the Digital Services Act, trusted flaggers were already supposed to enjoy priority treatment when they submit notices of illegal content. What is changing now is more operational. With sandbox testing of a copyright infringement notice API toolkit being opened to the first certified trusted flaggers with support from the EUIPO Observatory and the European Commission, some large-scale right holders and their agents are starting to move away from the fragmented webforms of individual platforms and toward a structured route into platform enforcement systems.

That sounds like a technical upgrade, but it is really a redesign of the entry point into copyright enforcement online. Whoever can deliver notices faster, in cleaner data formats and at sustained volume will gain a practical advantage the old complaint interfaces could never offer. For media groups and anti-piracy teams that spend their days chasing mirror sites, repost networks and repeated uploads across multiple services, this may be the closest thing in years to a system-level enforcement tool. For platforms, it also means the burden of accuracy, explainability and redress will become harder to postpone.

The market reaction to the Japan Patent Office’s mid-2026 revision of its AI-related invention guidance should not stop at the headline that MLLMs and cross-modal generative AI are now being treated more explicitly. The practical shift is deeper. For applicants, the revision changes how the specification should be written, where the technical contribution needs to be located, and how inventive-step and description arguments are likely to be tested in prosecution.

The direction is not surprising. JPO had already added 10 new AI-related examination cases in 2024, and its March 2026 report on AI-related invention trends widened the lens to generative AI, multimodal AI and prompt engineering. Read together, the message is fairly clear: Japanese examination practice is moving away from being impressed by the mere presence of a large model and toward asking what concrete technical problem the cross-modal system actually solves.

China’s Trademark Office has announced the second phase of its integrated electronic evidence service platform for trademark review, opening a direct blockchain channel for case-related e-evidence. On paper, this looks like another system update. In practice, it reaches into one of the hardest parts of trademark review: how digital evidence enters the case file, how quickly it can be verified, and how convincingly it can be organized in two-party proceedings.

Read together with China’s broader move toward full electronic trademark processing, the change matters more than the interface suggests. From July 1, 2026, trademark matters handled through agents are expected to be filed electronically through the online service system, and the newly issued guidance on electronic evidence already sets tighter rules on formats, file size, evidence catalogues and confidential channels. The second-phase platform therefore signals a shift from simple uploading to evidence management. For brand owners, respondents and agents, that is a real change in case strategy.

IPONZ and New Zealand’s Ministry of Business have now pushed trade mark infringement and digital platform governance into the same practical frame, and that matters for more than headline value. The key shift is not simply that platforms are mentioned more explicitly. It is that rights verification is being moved earlier in the enforcement chain. The new rapid protection mechanism for domestic and cross-border e-commerce platforms is designed to help platforms identify the rights basis faster, reduce hesitation after a complaint arrives, and move obviously high-risk listings, stores or batches into a tighter review path.

That changes the operating position for brand owners, marketplaces and sellers alike. Too many disputes used to stall at the same point: the platform could see that something looked wrong, but it was not confident enough to act quickly. Once official guidance spells out the expected structure of rights materials, record-keeping duties and repeat-infringement handling, the centre of gravity shifts. The real work starts earlier, at the level of platform-facing evidence packages, rights checks and response-clock discipline.

The USPTO has sent its information collection request for the Native American Tribal Insignia Database to the Office of Management and Budget for review, while continuing to invite public comment on the collection. According to the agency’s notice, the database records official insignia properly submitted by federally or state-recognized Native American tribes and serves as a reference point in trademark examination, especially when the Office assesses whether a mark may falsely suggest a connection under Section 2(a) of the Trademark Act. This round is framed as an extension and revision of an existing collection, so the focus remains procedural: how the database is maintained, how information is submitted, and how the reporting burden is evaluated.

That may sound like a narrow paperwork update, but it still matters. Entry in the database is not the same as trademark registration and does not itself create trademark rights for a tribe. Its practical value lies elsewhere: it keeps culturally sensitive identifiers visible inside the examination process rather than leaving them to be caught only after filing conflict emerges. For brand owners and advisers, the message is fairly direct. Marks that draw on tribal names, symbols, or related associations deserve a separate false-connection assessment, not just a routine similarity search.