On this page
- Quick answer
- What Russia actually did — and did not do
- India has a sovereign override too
- The membership is intact, the enforcement layer is thinning
- Tariffs and IP are now the same negotiation
- AI: the part where we genuinely do not know
- What an Indian rights holder should actually do
- The Section 39 step that comes first
- How MYCrave can help
- The point of all of this
On 6 March 2022, a single government decree set the price of a foreign patent at zero.
It repealed nothing and withdrew Russia from no treaty. Decree No. 299 amended the formula for compensating a patent owner whose invention is used without consent in a case of extreme necessity, and fixed that compensation at 0% of the user’s revenue where the owner belonged to a state Russia had listed as unfriendly.
For an Indian business, the interesting part is not Moscow. It is what the episode revealed about geopolitics and intellectual property rights — how a right actually dies. Nobody cancelled anything. The register stayed intact, the treaties stayed signed, and the patent stopped being worth defending.
Quick answer
No country has walked out of the IP treaties. What has weakened is the layer that makes them bite — enforcement, compensation, payment channels and filing routes. Meanwhile AI is now embedded in how patents get written, and no office anywhere requires anyone to say so. The practical response is not to stop filing abroad, but to file with route risk, payment risk and renewal risk planned for, and to keep records that survive a challenge to inventorship years later.
What Russia actually did — and what it did not do
The exaggerated version is that Russia declared all foreign IP free to use. That is not what happened, and the accurate version is more useful.
Decree No. 299 covered inventions, utility models and industrial designs, and it ran through a mechanism Russian law already contained: authorised use in cases of extreme necessity connected to defence and state security. What the decree changed was the price.
Around it came the measures that did the real damage. Parallel imports were legalised in 2022 for goods on a trade-ministry list. Decree No. 322 of May 2022 stopped licensees paying royalties to holders from unfriendly states except through special rouble accounts requiring authorisation. Decree No. 430 of May 2024 made government approval necessary before IP rights, trademark assignments included, could be acquired from those holders.
Then there is the case everyone cites and few finish. In early March 2022 a court in Kirov dismissed Entertainment One’s infringement claim over the Peppa Pig characters, reasoning that bringing it amid British sanctions was an abuse of rights. That ruling was overturned on 21 June 2022, the appeal court holding that filing a claim cannot itself be an abuse of rights and pointing to Russia’s obligations under the Berne Convention and the Madrid system.
The treaty floor held in court. The damage was done elsewhere — in the price of use, the plumbing of payment, and the friction of procedure. That is the pattern most likely to repeat.
The override is not a foreign invention. India has one too
There is an uncomfortable point here, and it strengthens the argument rather than weakening it.
Every serious patent system reserves a sovereign override, and India’s is unusually explicit. Section 92 of the Patents Act, 1970 allows compulsory licences on a government notification in a circumstance of national emergency, extreme urgency or public non-commercial use. Sections 99 and 100 permit use of a patented invention for government purposes, and Section 102 allows the Central Government to acquire an invention outright. Section 35 permits secrecy directions over inventions relevant for defence, and Section 157A lets the Central Government revoke a patent in the interest of the security of India.
So the objection cannot be that a state took power over private rights during a conflict. India has that power written down, and so does almost everyone else.
What separated Decree 299 from an ordinary emergency provision was narrower: compensation was set to nil, and eligibility for that nil turned on the owner’s nationality. Adequate remuneration and non-discrimination are what make an override survivable. Remove both and you have not suspended a right — you have expropriated one while leaving the paperwork in place.
That is the distinction worth watching for elsewhere. Not “will they seize it”, but “what will they pay, and will they pay me what they pay everyone else”.
Geopolitics and intellectual property rights: the membership is intact, the enforcement layer is thinning
The real question is whether the WTO and WIPO can still hold members to common rules. The evidence points both ways.
At the WTO, the Appellate Body has been unable to hear appeals since December 2019 because appointments are blocked. Members improvised: the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement had reached 61 participants covering roughly 60% of world trade by early 2026. The Fourteenth Ministerial Conference, held in Yaoundé from 26 to 30 March 2026, closed without a ministerial declaration, and the 28-year moratorium on customs duties for electronic transmissions lapsed on 30 March 2026 — after which 66 members signed a plurilateral e-commerce agreement rather than renewing a universal one. That is the shape of the problem: not collapse, but fragmentation.
WIPO tells a different story. Two multilateral treaties were adopted there in 2024 — one on intellectual property, genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in May, and the Riyadh Design Law Treaty in November. Russia stayed in the PCT, Madrid and Hague systems throughout, and Rospatent kept accepting filings and renewals.
What broke for applicants was cooperation, not membership. On 1 June 2022 the USPTO notified Rospatent that it was terminating Rospatent’s role as an International Searching and Preliminary Examining Authority for its applicants, effective 1 December 2022; the EPO took a comparable position. Nobody lost a treaty. Applicants lost a route — and routes cost money and months. If you are weighing filing a patent outside India through the PCT, the choice of searching authority is one of the decisions this affects directly.
Tariffs and IP are now the same negotiation
This is where the trade-war concern stops being speculative.
US tariffs on Indian goods reached 50% during 2025. An interim framework announced in early February 2026 brought the headline rate down to roughly 18% — and then the legal ground under it moved twice more in six months. After the US Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs, a temporary 10% global surcharge under Section 122 replaced them from 24 February 2026. That surcharge expired by operation of law on 24 July 2026, 150 days after it began, and at the same moment a new USTR action under Section 301, on forced-labour grounds, took its place — putting India in the 10% band. As at the end of August 2026 the operative figure is 10%, on its third statutory basis this year.
Separately, on 30 April 2026 the USTR released its 2026 Special 301 Report, again placing India on the Priority Watch List alongside Chile, China, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela. The report’s own framing is that IP concerns are being folded into reciprocal trade negotiations.
Read those together, and note what actually moved. The number an exporter pays has changed three times this year, but so has the law it rests on — IEEPA, then Section 122, now Section 301 — and each substitution was decided somewhere no rights holder was in the room. A pharmaceutical exporter’s patent environment, a software firm’s enforcement prospects and a design-led manufacturer’s border-seizure options are now inputs into a tariff negotiation no rights holder is party to and none can time. That does not make foreign filing a bad decision. It makes it a decision with a variable the older cost models never contained.
AI: the part where we genuinely do not know
Two very different things get reported here as one, and separating them matters.
WIPO’s release of 14 July 2026 found that more than 56,000 generative AI patent families were published in 2024 and 2025 combined — more than the whole of 2014 to 2023 together — with over 37,800 in 2025 alone, and generative AI now at 8.7% of AI-related patent publications, up from 6.1% in 2023.
Those numbers measure inventions about generative AI. They say nothing about how many applications were written by it. That second number does not exist in any jurisdiction, because no office requires it to be disclosed. The USPTO’s guidance of 11 April 2024 puts it most clearly: no general duty to reveal that an AI tool was used; a natural person must sign; a reasonable inquiry is required, and relying on the tool’s accuracy is not one; disclosure is mandatory only where the AI’s contribution is material to patentability or inventorship.
So the worry about telling original from artificial is well founded — but the reason is procedural, not philosophical. Nobody is asked, so nobody knows.
On inventorship, India has now spoken. On 15 April 2026 the Indian Patent Office refused Dr Stephen Thaler’s application no. 202017019068, holding that only a natural person can be named an inventor under the Patents Act, and separately finding the claimed container lacked inventive step. On copyright, a DPIIT committee published a working paper on 8 December 2025 proposing a hybrid model — a mandatory blanket licence for AI training with statutory remuneration through a central collecting body. Consultation closed on 7 January 2026. It remains a proposal: no Indian law has changed, and the question of who owns AI-generated output was deferred to a second paper that has not yet appeared. On what is patentable in the first place, the position is set out in our guide to whether software and AI inventions can be patented in India.
What an Indian rights holder should actually do
None of this argues for withdrawal. It argues for filing with the failure modes priced in.
| What can go wrong | How it shows up in practice | What to do now |
|---|---|---|
| Compensation or enforcement turns political | The right stays on the register but produces no usable remedy | Map the portfolio by jurisdiction exposure, not by market size |
| Payment channels close | Royalties accrue but cannot be remitted; renewal fees cannot be paid from India | Name an alternative payment route and currency in every licence; keep a local agent who can pay a renewal |
| A filing route disappears | Your chosen search authority stops being available to you mid-application | Choose the route and the ISA with a fallback in mind, and plan national-phase entry well before month 30 |
| Trade talks pull IP in | Your sector’s protection shifts because of an unrelated tariff dispute | Track the Special 301 cycle for your sector and time licensing around it |
| Inventorship is challenged later | An AI-assisted invention is questioned years after grant | Keep contemporaneous records of who conceived what, when, and which tools were used |
Renewals belong on the same list. A right you cannot pay for is a right you will lose on a date nobody diarised — the mechanics are in our guide to the patent renewal fee schedule and what happens if you miss one. And before a product goes to a new market, a freedom-to-operate search before you manufacture is what tells you whose rights you are walking into.
The Section 39 step that comes first
One India-specific step comes before all of them. Under Section 39 of the Patents Act, an Indian resident cannot file a patent application abroad unless an application for the same invention was filed in India at least six weeks earlier and no secrecy direction is in force, or written permission has been obtained from the Controller. Getting this wrong is not a formality: it carries penal consequences and can cost you the Indian patent.
And sometimes the honest recommendation is to file in fewer countries. Eight live, renewed, enforceable rights beat twenty that lapsed because nobody could move money in year six.
How MYCrave can help
MYCrave Consultancy & Services works on the parts of this that are actionable rather than the parts that are only worrying.
On foreign filing: a Section 39 permission check before anything leaves India, honest advice on whether the PCT or a direct Paris Convention route fits your circumstances, filing at the receiving office, review of the international search and publication, and national-phase planning country by country instead of a scramble at month 30. That work sits inside MYCrave’s international and PCT filing service.
On keeping rights alive: one portfolio register with renewal calendars, Watchdog IP monitoring for conflicting filings against your marks and designs, and properly documented assignments and licences — the documents where payment route, currency and governing law either protect you or do not. That is portfolio monitoring, renewals and licensing.
MYCrave has filed 22,000+ IP applications and has a Registered Patent Agent on the team. That matters here for one reason: route decisions and Section 39 clearances are difficult to correct later.
The point of all of this
The bargain underneath the system is simple. Someone spends years on a problem, the state grants a time-limited monopoly, and that monopoly can be sold, licensed or defended. Take away enforceability and the incentive goes with it. That part of the concern is right.
But the answer for a business is not to wait for lawmakers to build a war-proof framework. Geopolitics has not repealed intellectual property rights; it has made them conditional on things you can still plan for. Treat political risk as one more input alongside prior art and budget: file where you can enforce, pay where you can pay, document what you invented and how, and hold fewer rights properly rather than more rights carelessly.
Frequently asked questions
Can a country simply cancel my patent because of a political dispute?
Does TRIPS still protect me if the WTO cannot hear appeals?
My licensee cannot remit royalties because of sanctions. Do I lose my rights?
Can an AI be named as an inventor on an Indian patent?
Filing abroad this year, or holding rights in a market where the ground has shifted? A short review of your route, your renewals and your licence payment terms is worth having before the next deadline rather than after it.
Request an expert assessmentAbout this guide
- The Patents Act, 1970 — Sections 35, 39, 92, 99–102 and 157A
- Russian Government Decree No. 299 of 6 March 2022; Decree No. 322 of May 2022; Decree No. 430 of May 2024
- USPTO — notice terminating Rospatent as an International Searching and Preliminary Examining Authority, 1 June 2022
- WTO — Dispute Settlement Reform and MC14 materials; USTR — 2026 Special 301 Report, 30 April 2026
- US tariff position on Indian goods as at 31 August 2026 — the Section 122 global surcharge (in force 24 February 2026, expired by operation of law 24 July 2026) and the USTR Section 301 forced-labour action in force from 24 July 2026, under which India sits in the 10% band
- WIPO — “GenAI Innovation Soaring, With Patent Activity Nearly Tripling in Two Years”, 14 July 2026; Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge, 2024; Riyadh Design Law Treaty, 2024
- Federal Register — Guidance on Use of Artificial Intelligence-Based Tools in Practice Before the USPTO, 11 April 2024
- Indian Patent Office order refusing application no. 202017019068, 15 April 2026; DPIIT working paper on AI and copyright, 8 December 2025
Jurisdiction: India, with international developments included where they affect Indian rights holders. Trade and tariff positions are the fastest-moving facts on this page. The rate stated was checked against the operative US measures on 31 August 2026 and has changed three times in 2026 already — confirm it again before relying on it. General information about law and procedure, not legal advice on your matter. No filing, registration, grant or enforcement outcome is guaranteed. Corrections: write to info@mycrave.co.in with the paragraph and the source.