Insights

The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) reports a broad rise in demand for IP protection in 2025. Patent applications reached 62,050, up 4.7%; trade mark applications climbed to 96,328, an increase of 19.8%; and utility model filings rose 19.3% to 11,427. Growth in patents was supported by digital technologies, electric mobility and battery innovation, while the sharp increase in trade marks was linked in part to Chinese applicants and online-platform activity. Applications from China reached 10,027, up 196.2% year on year.

The figures point to more than a cyclical rebound. Germany remains an important testing ground for technology portfolios in batteries, mobility and communications, while platform commerce is making registered trade mark rights increasingly relevant to market access and enforcement. Businesses planning German filings should bring forward clearance work, class selection and portfolio review. They should also adjust payment procedures: since 1 July 2026, the DPMA's cash desks in Munich, Jena and Berlin have been closed and on-site cash payments are no longer accepted.

The EPO’s 2026 Guidelines for Examination took effect in April, and a continuing series of Marks & Clerk analyses has highlighted three procedural changes with immediate practical relevance. PACE requests for accelerated search have been withdrawn because the EPO now treats timely search reports as part of its normal workflow, although accelerated examination under PACE remains available. Applicants therefore have less reason to focus on expediting search and more reason to prepare early for the transition from the search opinion into substantive examination.

The treatment of amendments has also been sharpened. During examination, a division may carry out a prima facie assessment of voluntary amendments, but it must give reasons; where rejection requires extensive reasoning, that may itself indicate that the issue goes beyond a genuinely preliminary review. In opposition, a division should not refuse an auxiliary amendment request without first examining whether it substantively attempts to overcome the objection. The direction is clear: procedural discretion remains, but summary rejection requires a closer link between the amendment, the objection and the reasons given.

Moldova became the 40th member state of the European Patent Organisation on 1 June 2026. European patent applications filed on or after that date now automatically designate Moldova as an EPC contracting state, removing the separate validation fee previously used under the validation system. The same filing-date test applies to PCT cases: an international application filed on or after 1 June 2026 can cover Moldova through the European phase.

The transition still requires careful docketing. European and international applications filed before 1 June, as well as divisional applications derived from them, remain subject to the former validation route. National post-grant requirements in Moldova, including any applicable translation and renewal formalities, also continue to matter. Firms should therefore update filing templates, cost estimates and country-coverage checklists without treating automatic designation as the end of local post-grant work.

China’s Supreme People’s Court Intellectual Property Court released its administrative judgment in case (2022) Zui Gao Fa Zhi Xing Zhong No. 255 on 13 July 2026, dismissing the appeal against the validity of a patent covering an in-vitro diagnostic device and system held by EDAN Diagnostics. The dispute centred on whether the invention had been completed in China and therefore required a confidentiality examination before its first foreign filing. The court treated the place where the substantive technical solution was formed—not the applicant’s nationality, funding source or later commercialisation—as the decisive issue, relying on contemporaneous emails, technical discussions and travel records to support the finding that the relevant inventive work was completed in the United States.

The ruling gives cross-border R&D teams a practical evidentiary benchmark. A law-firm analysis published on 16 July highlighted the weight of contemporaneous technical records: design histories, laboratory notes, inventor locations, division of responsibilities and dated communications should form a coherent record before any overseas filing decision is made. Companies should therefore assess China’s foreign-filing security review requirement as a separate pre-filing compliance step. Reconstructing the development history only after a validity challenge is likely to be slower, more expensive and less persuasive.

China’s National Copyright Administration released a draft revision of the Regulations for the Implementation of the Copyright Law for public comment on 13 July 2026, with submissions due by 12 August. The current regulations have not been revised since 2013. The draft would expand the text from 38 to 49 articles, align it with the 2020 Copyright Law amendments, broaden the definition of performers, refine rules on accessible-format copies, and introduce a more detailed framework for technological protection measures and rights-management information in Articles 43–46.

For content platforms, software providers and copyright operators, the practical issue is not simply a longer regulation. The draft points toward closer scrutiny of digital rights controls, metadata handling, permitted circumvention, user network and data security, and the treatment of accessible works. The wording may still change after consultation, but affected businesses should already review their licensing, DRM, performer-consent and accessibility workflows and decide whether operational concerns should be raised before the 12 August deadline.

On 14 July 2026, Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology, known for its Xiao-i Robot platform, announced that the Shanghai High People’s Court had rejected all of its claims in case (2020) Hu Zhi Min Chu No. 7. The court found that Apple’s Siri did not infringe Chinese invention patent ZL200410053749.9, covering a “chatbot system”. Zhizhen had sought an injunction and damages provisionally calculated at RMB 10 billion, making the dispute one of China’s most closely watched high-value patent cases involving artificial intelligence and consumer electronics.

The ruling is a reminder that patent validity and infringement are separate questions. In software and AI disputes, the decisive issue is often whether the claimant can prove how the accused system operates internally and map that operation to every relevant claim element. Large damages figures attract attention, but claim construction, technical comparison and access to reliable evidence usually determine the outcome. Companies considering similar litigation should build the evidentiary record around verifiable technical facts from the outset rather than treating an upheld patent as proof of infringement.