New intellectual property legislation has entered into force in Kazakhstan on 26 January 2026. The changes aim to strengthen IP enforcement and bring the national practice closer to international standards.
Overview of key changes
The new legislation introduces several significant developments, including:
- Increased official registration costs
- Extended opposition periods
- Introduction of expedited examination procedures
- Launch of a new digital platform for collective rights management
Changes to official fees
The official fees have been revised. The overall level of official fees has increased slightly due to the VAT rate rising from 14% to 16%.
Updated fee structure for trademark applications
The fee structure for filing new trademark applications has been updated as follows:
- A base fee is applied to trademark applications covering up to three (3) Nice Classification classes, with up to ten (10) goods or services per class
- An additional fee is charged for each Nice Classification class exceeding three (3) classes, with up to ten (10) goods or services per class
- An additional fee is applied to each item of goods or services exceeding ten (10) items within each class
Extended opposition period
The opposition period has been extended from one month to two months from the date of publication. This change is generally viewed to be more user-friendly, as the previous one-month deadline was considered too short for rights holders to prepare and file oppositions effectively.
The revised opposition period will apply to publications made on or after 25 January 2026.
As to post-grant oppositions, no changes have been provided. The post-grant opposition period is still 5 years from the registration date.
Expedited examination options
Previously, the provisions governing expedited examination were set out only in the implementing rules. Following the recent amendments, these provisions have been formally incorporated into the trademark law.
The amendments introduce a possibility for expedited examination of trademark applications:
- Preliminary examination under the accelerated procedure will be conducted within ten working days (compared to approximately one month under the standard procedure)
- Substantive examination under the accelerated procedure will be completed within three months (instead of the usual seven months), calculated from the filing date of the application
Patents
As for patents, the amendments and additions do not affect the prosecution of patents or utility models but relate to definitions, and most of the changes affect patent attorneys.
The scope of substantive examination and the overall prosecution timelines remain unchanged.
There is an increase in the patent fees relating to:
- substantive examination for each additional design variant in the same application
- recordal of additional agreement to a registered license (sublicense) contract, pledge agreement, or franchise contract in relation to each patent exceeding one in the same agreement
- conducting any type of search.
For any further information, please get in touch with our Partner, Trademark Attorney Annikki Hämäläinen.