Insights

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.

In a hearing decision published on 7 September 2026, the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) rejected an attempt to secure exclusive trademark rights over the names of several modern historical inventors and generic concepts drawn from commercial history. The applications covered Class 41 education and video entertainment production services and Class 9 downloadable digital content. The tribunal accepted the opponent’s case that famous historical figures, events and foundational invention names drawn from the public historical record may lack inherent distinctiveness when used in this way, while exclusivity could also impede documentary makers, educators and other content producers from making necessary descriptive references. On the facts, the filing strategy was also found to involve bad faith.

The decision is a useful reminder that trademark law is not a tool for fencing off shared historical vocabulary. Applicants may still build brands around historical themes, but the closer a sign sits to material that creators need to describe facts, people or established inventions, the harder it becomes to justify broad exclusive control. The ruling should therefore matter to both rights owners and media businesses: defensive filings aimed primarily at blocking ordinary historical reference are likely to face closer scrutiny, especially where distinctiveness is weak and the commercial rationale appears secondary to exclusion.

On 8 September 2026, the Munich Local Division of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) issued a ruling in a patent infringement dispute involving digital audiovisual processing equipment that further clarifies how security may be set when EPO opposition proceedings run in parallel with a UPC preliminary injunction (PI) action. The approach reflected in the decision is that the court may look beyond the claimant’s solvency and the defendant’s potential loss, and factor the patent’s vulnerability in the parallel opposition into the amount of security required. Where detailed prior-art material points to a high risk of revocation, the security needed to maintain interim relief may rise materially in order to protect the defendant against losses if the injunction is later lifted.

The practical effect is to bring patent-validity risk forward into the interim-relief stage. A patentee seeking a PI may need not only a strong urgency and infringement case, but also a more robust validity record and a realistic assessment of the cash cost of higher security. For defendants, well-developed prior-art and EPO opposition submissions may influence both whether interim relief is granted and the financial conditions attached to it. Security should still be understood as a risk-allocation device rather than a standalone penalty, but where the parallel validity challenge appears unusually strong, the UPC is signalling greater caution before allowing one side to obtain a potentially market-shaping cross-border injunction ahead of a final validity determination.

Congress has approved H.R. 6500, extending the USPTO's America Invents Act fee-setting authority through 11 December 2026. Without congressional action, that authority would have expired after 15 September. The short extension removes the immediate risk of a statutory gap and gives lawmakers several more months to decide whether the Office should retain longer-term flexibility to set patent and trademark fees.

The more consequential issue is what Congress may demand in return. At a 2 September House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, lawmakers and witnesses tied the renewal debate to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's use of discretionary denial in proceedings such as inter partes review. Fee authority and PTAB institution policy are legally distinct, but the approaching sunset has created leverage. A longer renewal could therefore become a vehicle for procedural guardrails, reporting duties or other limits on how discretionary denial is applied.

On September 11, 2026, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) updated its Next Generation Patents (NGP) service notice to address cases where delays in processing voluntary amendments led examiners to issue reports based on outdated claims. Under the temporary policy, CIPO has relaxed the conditions for withdrawing an examiner’s report where the relevant amendment was received more than 30 days before the report date. Applicants must make the request in writing before filing a response, or no later than the response deadline, and CIPO will assess requests case by case. The agency has not announced an end date for the measure.

The change arrives alongside a broader push to accelerate selected patent work. CIPO’s Key Technology Expedited Program (KTEP), launched on September 2, currently opens a fast-track route for critical-minerals innovation, with up to 50 requests per year, a waiver of the 2026 advanced-examination fee of C$744.10 for approved requests, and a target of issuing a first office action within about seven months. Canada and China have also extended their Patent Prosecution Highway pilot for five years, through August 31, 2031. The practical point for applicants is to separate three different tools: the NGP policy is a remedy for procedural mismatch, KTEP prioritizes eligible critical-technology cases, and PPH can accelerate examination where corresponding claims have already reached an allowable stage in the partner office.

Brazil’s National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) has reopened its priority examination route for trademark cases based on prior-use rights. The route had been temporarily suspended in August after the relevant quota was exhausted. Its return does not create a new first-to-use trademark system: Brazil remains fundamentally registration-based, while Article 129(1) of the Industrial Property Law preserves an exception for a good-faith user that can show use in Brazil for at least six months before a third party’s filing or priority date in connection with identical, similar or related goods or services. INPI’s current practice allows that claim to be raised in opposition proceedings and in administrative nullity actions against a registration, supported by evidence of actual use and by the claimant’s own filing position.

For brand owners facing bad-faith filings, the practical significance lies more in speed and evidence strategy than in a relaxation of the substantive test. INPI’s new Internal Regulations, announced on 8 September, also reorganise institutional responsibilities and decision-making structures, which may help some prior-use disputes move through the administrative system more efficiently. The evidentiary burden remains central, however: invoices, advertising, transaction records and online sales material need to establish use before the critical date with enough clarity to withstand challenge. Companies already trading in Brazil without a completed registration should therefore treat prior-use rights as a defensive safeguard, not as a substitute for timely filing and disciplined evidence preservation.

This article updates our report of 10 August, “Baurin Keeps OTDP Alive Beyond Patent-Term Extension Concerns”.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Appeals Review Panel (ARP) issued a precedential decision on August 6, 2026 in Ex parte Baurin (Appeal 2024-002920), reinstating the examiner’s obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP) rejection of claims 1–18. The panel concluded that Federal Circuit precedent still recognizes an independent anti-harassment rationale for OTDP even where the later patent would not create an unjustified timewise extension of exclusivity. The concern is that separately owned patents covering obvious variants of the same invention could expose licensees or accused infringers to repeated assertions by different owners; the USPTO’s terminal disclaimer framework, including its common-ownership requirement, is intended in part to address that risk.

For U.S. prosecution strategy, the practical point is straightforward: applicants cannot assume that the absence of a later expiration date ends the OTDP inquiry. Related applications, overlapping inventorship and portfolios that may later be divided among different owners still warrant a coordinated review of OTDP, terminal disclaimers and ownership structure. The ARP itself also questioned whether anti-harassment should remain a freestanding rationale because of the costs it may impose on innovation, leaving further clarification to the Federal Circuit. Until that occurs, applicants should treat anti-harassment as part of the USPTO’s current precedential OTDP framework rather than relying on patent-term comparison alone.