Monday, December 23, 2013 Denmark to vote on unitary patent in referendum on May, 25th

According to the Copenhagen post, Denmark will definitely hold a referendum before joining the unified patent court. The unitary patent requires 13 states to ratify the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court. Denmark is one of the 25 countries that is currently eligible to ratify.

The referendum could have been avoided if an 85% majority had been found in the parliament, but finding such a large majority proved not possible. According to minister, Henrik Sass Larse, "I had hoped that we would find a solution in parliament, but with the feedback we received it will not be possible to obtain a five sixths majority as the constitution requires."

The referendum will be held together with the May 25 election for the European Parliament.

As far as I know only Denmark and Ireland have announced plans for a referendum on the unitary patent.  
If I count the countries, it look fairly certain that the unitary patent will be reality though, with or without those two countries.  Out of the 28 member states, three did not sign the agreement (Croatia, Poland and Spain). That leaves 25 states.

Let's separate the  3 required states that need to ratify in any case from that number (Germany, France and the United Kingdom).  We also have one state that already ratified (Austria).  That leaves us with 21 states, two of which will hold a referendum. Even if we assume, pessimistically, that both states will reject the unitary patent, we are left with 9 states to ratify out of 19 states. To me that seems quite plausible.

2015 is looking to be a decisive year for the unitary patent.