Insights

South Korea’s Ministry of Intellectual Property (MOIP) has announced that its 2026 budget for intellectual property dispute response will rise to KRW 46.836 billion, up KRW 14.520 billion from the previous year. The policy target is highly practical: many companies still struggle to act effectively even after they have been sued or infringed because dispute response remains expensive, specialist-driven and difficult to coordinate across borders. The announcement makes that policy logic concrete through two representative scenarios: a generative AI company sued overseas by a non-practicing entity (NPE), and export-oriented fashion companies harmed by overseas counterfeiting and brand free-riding.

What matters here is not only that more money is being allocated. MOIP is signaling a broader shift from ad hoc, after-the-fact relief toward an integrated support framework that combines early risk detection, overseas rights deployment, enforcement coordination, platform measures and anti-counterfeit technology adoption. For Korean companies already exporting or building their next phase of growth abroad, that suggests South Korea’s IP policy is moving beyond the question of whether public support exists and toward the more important question of whether companies can access a usable dispute-response infrastructure.

In March 2026, EUIPO completed two closely linked moves in the digital-enforcement space. From 3 to 5 March, it co-hosted an IP OSINT Tools Workshop with the Spanish National Police in Gran Canaria to help enforcement officers use open-source intelligence tools against online piracy, counterfeiting and other cyber-enabled crime. Then, on 19 and 20 March in Athens, it trained judges and prosecutors through a practical seminar on moving “from the open web to the dark web,” placing open-web intelligence, dark-web awareness and OSINT exercises directly inside a judicial-learning framework. For brand owners, this is no longer just a training story. It is a sign that Europe’s IP enforcement architecture is institutionalising digital-investigation capacity much earlier in the case cycle.

When those March activities are read together with EUIPO’s 2026 work programme — which points to practical investigative and prosecutorial guidance using advanced technologies, web-monitoring tools for enforcers, and stronger cooperation under the 2026–2029 EMPACT cycle — the direction becomes clearer. The EU is gradually moving anti-counterfeiting work away from a model centred only on warehouse seizures, platform notices and isolated leads, and toward a hybrid model driven by data, cross-border coordination and technological confrontation. The most important development is not simply that EUIPO has introduced another tool. It is that the entry point and evidentiary structure of future cross-border trademark-counterfeiting cases are starting to change.

At the end of March, the European Patent Office (EPO) publicly outlined the latest outcome of its dialogue with the German Association of Industry Intellectual Property Experts (VPP) and major corporate representatives: AI will continue to be integrated more deeply into the patent granting process and user-facing services, but this will not mean handing legal judgment over to machines. The shared position is becoming clearer: AI should strengthen efficiency, consistency and accessibility, while final legal decisions, procedural control and institutional accountability must remain firmly in human hands.

This matters not because “patent offices use AI” is a novel headline, but because the EPO is now defining the institutional role of AI more precisely. AI is being framed not as a substitute for examiners, but as an amplifier of examiner capability. It is not being presented as a shortcut for lowering examination density, but as a foundational tool for improving search, classification, information handling and workflow coordination. For applicants, in-house IP teams and external representatives, the real signal is that European patent examination will continue to become more digital and more intelligent, while still insisting on procedural fairness, traceable responsibility and legal rigor.

By late March 2026, two USPTO workflow changes around Patent Center had moved from announcement to live operating reality. Effective March 9, the Automated Interview Request (AIR) form was relocated into Patent Center and is now submitted from the Existing Submissions menu. On the same effective date, courtesy ceremonial paper copies of eGrants stopped being automatic and became opt-in when the issue fee is paid. For law firms, portfolio managers and applicants that rely on stable internal routing, these are not cosmetic changes. They alter where routine procedural action actually happens.

On paper, one update concerns interview scheduling and the other concerns a post-allowance paper courtesy copy. In practice, both point in the same direction: the USPTO is concentrating more prosecution behavior inside Patent Center while shifting more legacy defaults into affirmative user choices. That means the operational risk no longer lies mainly in misunderstanding substantive patent law. It increasingly lies in failing to update filing habits, responsibility maps and client-facing checklists quickly enough.

In March 2026, WIPO’s Madrid System Information Notices page turned into an unusually dense stream of individual-fee updates. On March 12 alone, WIPO listed 17 notices changing individual fees, including several markets that sit near the top of many international trademark filing plans for cross-border businesses, such as China, the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia and Indonesia. The United Kingdom had already issued its own notice on January 26, with the revised fees taking effect on April 1. For brand owners using the Madrid System for centralized filings, subsequent designations and renewals, this is not a routine administrative refresh. It is a direct reset of cost assumptions for 2026 portfolio planning.

The bigger risk is that this wave does not affect only new applications. Under the relevant notices, the revised amounts apply to international applications received by the Office of origin on or after the effective date, to subsequent designations filed on or after that date, and to renewals processed on or after that date. In practice, filings already penciled in for early Q2 may now sit on opposite sides of two fee cut-off points. That makes immediate recalculation a portfolio-management task, not a clerical update.

As Kazakhstan’s package of intellectual property amendments, signed in November 2025 and brought into implementation from January 2026, begins to take practical effect, one of the most consequential changes for brand owners has moved from policy headline to usable procedure: within a trademark system where ordinary examination still typically takes around seven months, the accelerated route compresses the full review cycle to roughly three months. For businesses assessing how and when to enter Central Asia, that is not merely an administrative improvement. It changes the sequencing of clearance, launch, channel negotiations and enforcement planning.

From the perspective of Chinese and other export-oriented companies, Kazakhstan often functions not only as a destination market but also as a regional foothold for distribution, pilot operations and brand testing across Central Asia. Once the trademark timeline is materially shortened, the chances increase that a company can secure its brand before a product launch, stabilise rights before appointing distributors, and build a cleaner evidence chain before localised operations or cross-border e-commerce begin. But speed does not eliminate risk. The real shift is that trademark filing now needs to move forward in the market-entry calendar, rather than remain a remedial step after business has already started.