Insights

The UK Intellectual Property Office has moved its patent digitisation project into a different phase. In its June 2026 update, the Office said that roughly three quarters of patent applications are now coming in through the new digital patents service launched to the public on 1 April. That matters less as a usage statistic than as a policy signal: Web Filing and the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. route for patent applications and requests are now on a published path toward retirement, with decommissioning to be completed no sooner than autumn 2026 and at least two months’ notice before the exact dates.

The bigger story is not simply that an old filing channel is being shut down. UKIPO is also reshaping how costs and procedure are experienced inside the filing journey. Its current priority improvements include showing fee details earlier on the “Check your answers” page and allowing examination responses to be uploaded directly as PDF letters. Those features look operational, but they will affect approval chains, prosecution habits and the way firms manage timing risk around UK filings.

The EUIPO Observatory has published its 2025 annual monitoring report on online advertising on IPR-infringing websites and apps, and the numbers are difficult to dismiss. Across 5,671 monitored websites, 37% were classified as illegal and 63% as high-risk; estimated worldwide ad revenue for those websites reached EUR 382 million in 2025. The report also identified 61,628 unique advertisers on monitored websites, including 4,778 Major Brands.

What makes this development more than another anti-piracy headline is that the ad money is still coming from the mainstream market. Legitimate advertising budgets continue to reach infringing traffic through fragmented programmatic buying chains. For brands, agencies and ad tech platforms, this is no longer a side issue for legal teams. It is becoming a governance question about who screens supply, who documents exceptions, and who takes responsibility when lawful brands end up funding unlawful or high-risk inventory.

Debate over AI and copyright in the UK has flared up again in late June 2026, but the real significance lies in two policy signals that are harder to ignore. In its March 2026 report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, the government stepped back from its earlier preference for a commercial text and data mining exception built around rights reservation and transparency. At the same time, it signalled that the UK’s special copyright protection for wholly computer-generated works may no longer deserve to survive.

This is not final legislation. It is, however, a serious change in policy direction. For content businesses, platforms, model developers and companies shipping AI products into the UK, the practical questions are no longer limited to who owns an output. The harder issues are becoming lawful access to training material, whether opt-out systems can work at scale, how much transparency may be expected around crawling and training, and where the legal line will be drawn between AI-assisted works and outputs with no human author at all.

Around 26 June 2026, several IP authorities pushed a familiar fraud back into view: messages claiming that a third party is about to file the recipient’s brand in the UK or EU unless an urgent paid instruction is given first. IPOPHL specifically warned about a UK-based outfit calling itself “Crown Mark” and said it had no official relationship with that entity or with claims that it was linked to IP offices in the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Australia or the European Union.

The important change is not simply that fake notices still exist. The script has become smarter. Instead of generic renewal invoices, the sender now mimics regulatory cooperation, borrows real lawyer identities and uses procedural language to create the illusion of an official escalation path. For companies without an in-house brand team, that can distort judgment very quickly.

On 25 June 2026, EUIPO said the 2026 SME Fund has moved past its halfway point. Under the first-come, first-served design of the scheme, some funding pots for trade marks and designs have already been exhausted, but vouchers for European and national prior art searches and for IP Scan remain open. For EU SMEs still weighing patent filing routes, that leaves a practical window to recover up to 75% of eligible official fees.

The mid-year picture also says something about priorities. The faster-moving subsidies were quickly absorbed, while the support that helps businesses test freedom to operate, patentability and filing strategy is still available. For companies planning expansion or only now turning R&D into filings, that remaining budget may be more useful than it first appears: it buys time for a better decision, not just a cheaper application.

CNIPA’s Trademark Office issued a notice dated June 4, 2026, effective June 5, changing how certain documents are served in three-year non-use cancellation proceedings involving Madrid international registrations designating China. The notice covers the request to submit evidence of use or explain justified non-use, as well as decisions and closure notices issued after a holder fails to respond in time; instead of sending those documents directly to the holder by paper mail, CNIPA will have WIPO’s International Bureau forward them electronically.

This is more than an administrative cleanup. For many Madrid holders, the decisive question is no longer whether a notice exists, but whether it reaches the right inbox, the WIPO-recorded representative and the China-facing team early enough to organize evidence and instructions. That is why the discussion has continued to intensify through late June: the weak point is moving from paper service to digital workflow, and a missed handoff can become a lapse problem very quickly.