UKIPO's September AI Overhaul: What Brand Owners Must Do Before the Digital Countdown

The Register Is About to Change Shape

Something quiet but consequential is approaching for every brand owner with UK trade mark registrations. The UKIPO is set to begin a discovery phase for updating its trade mark search and filing platform from September 2026: a rebuild that will, for the first time, put artificial intelligence tools at the heart of how the UK register operates. (Stevens & Bolton, July 2026)

The trigger is not administrative tidiness. It is a structural problem that has been building for years.

Non-Traditional Marks Are Breaking the Old System

The UK trade mark register was built for words and logos. Brands have not stood still. Sound marks, motion marks, multimedia filings, and applications tied to personality or image rights are all arriving in greater volumes, and the current search infrastructure struggles to handle them.

As reported by MLex in May, the UKIPO's Head of Trade Marks, Charlotte Champion, told the INTA Annual Meeting in London that the authority is actively looking at AI services to help manage this growing category of non-traditional filings. The difficulty in searching for these registrations, she noted, means the UKIPO can struggle to ensure they are adequately protected: a risk that falls squarely on the brand owner, not the Office.

Stevens & Bolton's analysis, published in July, confirms the commercial context. Non-traditional filings are rising because brand owners are hunting for new ways to differentiate in a crowded market, and because AI-generated content is replicating image and likeness at scale. Companies are locking down every distinctive signal they own, a voice, a jingle, a gesture, before someone else's algorithm commoditises it.

The End of Series Marks: A Practical Shock

AI tools are only part of the incoming change. The UKIPO's wider One IPO Transformation Programme is also ending the series trade mark service for new applications, meaning applicants will no longer be able to bundle up to six close variants of a mark into a single filing at a reduced fee. Each variant will need its own application, its own fee, and its own examination cycle.

The change takes effect when the new digital trade marks service launches. September's discovery phase is the formal start of that development road. Brands that rely on multiple logo variants, colour versions, or minor stylisations should treat this as an operational deadline, not a vague future risk.

Under the April 2026 fee increase, the first such rise for UK trade marks since 1998, the cumulative cost of separate variant filings will be material. The online fee is now £205 for the first class and £60 for each additional class. A portfolio that previously sheltered six variants under a single series application will, after the new service launches, require six individual applications: a meaningful shift in budget.

Class 35 Is Flashing a Warning Sign

The timing coincides with a striking data point from this desk's analysis of IPO filing records. UK Class 35 trade mark filings, covering retail services, business management, and the commercial infrastructure underpinning most brand-facing activity, stood at 5,428 applications in Q3 2026: a fall of 49.7% against the prior period, according to AIBD analysis of IPO (TMD) data, as of August 2026.

Class 35 is often the first class dropped when brand owners tighten budgets or consolidate portfolios. A near-halving of filings in a single quarter, set against rising fees and an imminent system change, suggests that some brand owners are already pausing, possibly in a wait-and-see posture ahead of the new digital service. That posture carries its own risk. The register rewards the swift.

Clarivate's Trademark Filing Trends Report 2026, published in May, adds a structural note: AI developers themselves remain largely absent from the top filer lists, suggesting that brand formalisation in the sector is still emerging, even as AI tools reshape every other corner of trademark practice.

The SkyKick Doctrine Still Bites

Brands filing ahead of the September changes also need to mind the doctrine that the UK Supreme Court confirmed in Sky v SkyKick [2024]: trade marks filed with specifications that are overly broad, where the applicant had no genuine intention to use the mark across all the claimed goods and services, remain vulnerable to challenge. Filing faster does not mean filing carelessly. The UKIPO's incoming public document inspection service, which will make examination reports and submissions visible online, raises the stakes further. Every specification choice will be scrutinised.

The Practical Action This Week

Audit your variant marks now. If your brand uses multiple stylised versions, colour iterations, or minor word-form differences that currently sit in a single series application, quantify the cost of separating them under the post-September fee structure. Then decide which variants justify individual registration and which can be retired. Do that analysis before the new digital service launches, not after. If non-traditional assets, a sonic logo, a branded gesture, a distinctive colour mark, are not yet on the register, the approaching AI-assisted search infrastructure may finally make them searchable and therefore worth filing. Talk to a qualified trade mark attorney before the discovery phase begins.