Insights

The application window for the WIPO Global Awards 2026 will close on March 31 at 23:59 Central European Time. The program is open to startups and SMEs from all 194 WIPO Member States, but the real test is not simply whether a business owns patents, trademarks, designs or copyrights. The stronger question is whether those rights have already been turned into something economically and socially legible: market entry, product differentiation, licensing leverage, investor credibility, operational scale, or measurable public impact. For innovative companies that already sit on a meaningful mix of technology, brand, design or content assets, this is not just another award deadline. It is a deadline for translating IP strategy into an international growth narrative.

This year’s most notable development is the addition of a new Sports Prize, introduced in line with the 2026 World IP Day theme, “IP and Sports.” On the surface, that looks like a thematic expansion of the awards structure. At a deeper level, it signals something more important: the international conversation around IP is moving further away from static ownership and closer to real-world commercialization, sector relevance and demonstrable social value. For startups and SMEs rushing toward the deadline, the most valuable preparation is therefore not just polishing a company profile. It is building a persuasive explanation of why their IP has already become an engine of growth.

The IP5 offices — CNIPA, the EPO, the JPO, MOIP (formerly KIPO) and the USPTO — have jointly decided to extend the IP5 Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot for another three years, from January 6, 2026 to January 5, 2029. The offices also made clear that the requirements and procedures for filing PPH requests under the pilot will remain unchanged. In practical terms, applicants will still be able to rely on an existing and familiar work-sharing route to accelerate related patent applications across major jurisdictions at a time when examination efficiency, budget discipline and filing speed are becoming more tightly linked.

On its face, this looks like a routine renewal notice. In reality, it is a stronger policy signal about continuity. The IP5 did not use the renewal to rewrite the interface, narrow access, or impose new procedural burdens. Instead, it preserved a tool that applicants, in-house teams and external counsel already know how to use. For businesses trying to align patent timing with fundraising, licensing, product launch, freedom-to-operate planning or cross-border technology partnerships, the real value is not simply that PPH remains available. It is that the way to use it is not suddenly changing over the next three years.

In March 2026, the EUIPO used a joint webinar to push the implementation signal of CP16 and CP17 into the market again. The two Common Practices focus respectively on when a sign describing the subject matter of goods or services may be refused as descriptive, and when a slogan can still function as a trade mark. What matters here is less a sudden statutory change than a broader shift in examination culture: issues that used to depend heavily on office-specific instincts are being pulled into a more structured and more predictable framework across European trade mark practice.

For brand owners, the significance is practical. European trade mark assessment is moving from a world where applicants merely know which examples are risky to one where they can increasingly anticipate the logic behind refusals. Read together with CP14 on public policy and morality and CP15 on the comparison of goods and services, CP16 and CP17 are not just two new documents. They are another step in aligning how offices analyse descriptiveness, promotional wording and filing specifications before disputes even begin.

On 26 March 2026, Advocate General Nicholas Emiliou delivered his Opinion in Case C-579/24 Austro-Mechana and AKM, adding an important new layer to the licensing architecture for online content-sharing service providers under the EU Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. In his view, when users upload protected content to a platform, the process does not involve only an act of communication to the public or making available to the public; it also involves acts of reproduction in the form of digital copies made on the platform’s servers.

The real significance of the Opinion, however, is not that it creates a fresh licensing tollbooth. Emiliou also argues that the authorisation which an online content-sharing service provider must obtain under Article 17(1) of the DSM Directive for communication to the public or making available to the public necessarily extends to the technically required reproductions made on its servers in order to give the public access to that content. If the Court follows that approach, the practical result would be highly consequential: platform compliance, licensing negotiations with collective management organisations, and the allocation of responsibility between platforms and users would all move further toward a single integrated authorisation model rather than a stacked, double-licensing structure.

On March 12, 2026, WIPO issued Information Notices MADRID/2026/7, MADRID/2026/9 and MADRID/2026/13, confirming that the individual fees under the Madrid System will be reduced for Australia, China and Japan as from April 12, 2026. For applications and subsequent designations, Australia will fall from 232 to 217 Swiss francs per class; China from 249 to 220 Swiss francs for one class and from 125 to 110 for each additional class; and Japan from 266 to 221 Swiss francs for one class and from 250 to 208 for each additional class. Renewal fees are also reduced for China and Japan, and for Australia the same lower per-class amount applies to renewals as well.

This is more than a routine fee update. For brand owners planning to cover Australia, China and Japan through a single Madrid filing strategy, the changes affect filing timing, class planning, subsequent designations and renewal budgets. Businesses with multi-class portfolios, renewals approaching in the second quarter of 2026, or expansion plans in Asia-Pacific should be recalculating now rather than treating the fee cut as a minor administrative footnote.

China’s latest revision to the Patent Examination Guidelines, published by CNIPA at the end of 2025 and effective from January 1, 2026, makes the examination framework for inventions involving artificial intelligence, big data and algorithm-related features significantly more explicit. The revised text renames the relevant section to cover inventions involving AI, big data and other solutions containing algorithmic features or business rules and methods, while also adding a clearer Article 5(1) filter for content that violates law, social morality or the public interest.

This is more than a drafting clean-up. For applicants, R&D teams and patent firms, the revised framework shifts the focus from simply asking whether a solution “uses AI” to asking who the real inventors are, whether the data and decision logic are legally and ethically defensible, whether algorithmic features and technical features together form a real technical contribution, and whether model design or encoding-related subject matter has been disclosed with enough specificity to support patent protection. In the same revision package, CNIPA also introduced dedicated rules on bitstream-related claims, reinforcing the same policy instinct: abstract data outputs do not automatically deserve protection, but concrete technical methods tied to how such outputs are generated, stored or transmitted may.