When the Patent Office Rewrites the Rules on AI, Trademark Strategy Has to Follow

The Ruling That Changes More Than Patent Law

Last week the UK Intellectual Property Office issued updated practice guidance on how examiners should search and assess patent applications involving AI inventions, a direct response to the Supreme Court's February judgment in Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller General of Patents [2026] UKSC 3. The UKIPO confirmed that the ruling had "immediate implications for the examination of UK patent applications, particularly those involving computer-implemented inventions," and the new practice notice sets out precisely how examiners should apply the reinterpreted section 1 of the Patents Act 1977 going forward.

For a brand-strategy audience the instinct is to file that under "patents, not our problem." Resist it.

Why Brand Owners Should Be Paying Attention

The Supreme Court's decision is, at its core, about whether an AI system constitutes an "invention" under UK law. The Court abandoned the long-established Aerotel four-step framework and aligned UK practice with the European Patent Office, establishing a markedly lower initial hurdle for AI-related inventions. A lower hurdle for AI patents means more granted rights, more crowded registers, and, crucially, more pressure on trade mark specifications to carry the weight of brand distinction where patent coverage overlaps with branding territory.

This matters in Class 42 especially. The 13th edition of the WIPO Nice Classification (NCL 13-2026), in force since 1 January 2026, explicitly added "artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS)" to Class 42 for the first time. So the services that courts and the UKIPO are now more likely to treat as patentable are the same services that brand owners must specify with greater precision when filing trade marks. The EUIPO highlighted this point when its 2026 Guidelines entered force on 1 July: the term "virtual goods" alone is no longer accepted, and the message for AI-adjacent specifications is identical, precision or refusal.

The UKIPO's Own AI Ambitions, and the September Signal

There is an institutional dimension here that practitioners should track. The UKIPO is not merely adjudicating on AI; it is deploying it internally. Its branded SEARCH platform uses what the office describes as "AI-driven concepts" to rank patent results by relevance for the first time, and a separate AI allocation tool has been disclosed that automatically assigns applications to examiners with relevant expertise, completing a task that previously took 14 days, instantly.

More significant for trade mark owners: reporting by MLex confirms that a full overhaul of the UK's trademark filing and search systems is set to begin in September 2026, with the UKIPO actively evaluating AI tools to handle the surge in non-traditional filings, sounds, gestures, and marks that conventional text-search cannot easily interrogate. The UKIPO's Corporate Plan for 2026-27, reviewed by Marks & Clerk, confirms that trade marks are moving into the next stage of the "One IPO" digital transformation, learning from the patents experience. The One IPO Search Tool, already live for patents, will extend to trade marks and designs, enabling unified search across all IP rights.

Practitioners at World IP Review's recently published UK Rankings noted the UKIPO is already struggling with "woeful" pendency times after fees rose by an average of 25% in April, the first increase since 1998, and filing volumes climbed. That fee rise was expressly designed to fund this digital modernisation. Brand owners are paying for the upgrade whether they use it or not.

The Gap That Should Trouble Legal-Services Brands in Particular

Here is where the AIBD data sharpens the picture. According to AI Business Dispatch analysis of Companies House and IPO data (as of July 2026), 122 new SIC 69.10 companies, legal activities businesses, were incorporated in Q3 2026, down 82.7% on the prior period, suggesting a sharp consolidation in new legal-sector formation. Yet Class 35 UK trademark filings in the same period came in at just 2,548, a fall of 76.4% against the prior period. A striking 98.4% of active SIC 69.10 companies hold no Class 35 trademark registration at all.

Class 35 covers business administration and, notably, the retail and subscription-services adjacencies that many AI-enabled legal-tech platforms rely on to distinguish their commercial offering. The Clarivate Trademark Filing Trends Report 2026 flagged that despite rapid commercial influence, most major AI companies did not feature among the highest trademark filers, suggesting "brand formalisation in the sector is still emerging." For legal-services businesses riding the AI wave, that gap between market presence and registered brand protection is a liability, not a strategy.

The ONS published data two days ago showing that large language models are now the most widely used AI technology among UK businesses with 10 or more employees (18%), followed by visual-content creation tools. Of those businesses that use at least one AI technology, only 10% report using it extensively. Operational adoption is running far ahead of IP formalisation.

Deepfakes and the Scatter-Gun Problem

One other thread from the WIPR UK Rankings report deserves a line. Attorneys are openly discussing the use of a "scatter-gun approach" to trademark and copyright registrations as a response to AI-generated deepfakes, filing broadly across classes in the absence of a specific personality or likeness right in UK law. That is an understandable reflex. But the SkyKick doctrine, confirmed by the UK Supreme Court in 2024 and now firmly embedded in UKIPO practice, penalises overly broad specifications filed without genuine intention to use across all claimed classes. Broad protection and bad-faith risk now sit uncomfortably close together. Precision is not optional.

What Brand Owners Should Do This Week

If your business provides, licences, or is materially dependent on AI-powered services, pull your Class 42 specification and read it against NCL 13-2026 wording. Check whether "AIaaS" or equivalent terms appear, and whether the scope is genuinely defensible under the SkyKick use-intention test. Then cross-check your Class 35 position: if you are operating under SIC 69.10 or adjacent legal-tech activity and you have no Class 35 registration, you are among the 98.4% carrying unregistered risk. Run a clearance search, TrademarkDashboard's UK register search covers some 2.95 million records, with AI look-alike matching available from £9.99, then speak to a qualified trademark attorney before the September digital overhaul changes what the register looks like on the other side.