UK still proceeding with preparations to ratify Unified Patent Court


In a press release the UK intellectual property office states that they are still proceeding with preparations to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement. The press release is optimistically titled "UK signals green light to Unified Patent Court Agreement".

It is not all green lights in the press release though. Baroness Neville Rolfe (Minister for Intellectual Property) links the ratification to access to the free market. Is this press release offering ratification of the unitary patent in exchange for access to the free market? Despite the optimistic language, I still do not expect a quick ratification. If the Article 50 exit negotiations will include negotiating the Unified Patent Court Agreement, it will take at least two more years. Assuming of course, the unitary patent does not fall by the wayside in the process.

Photo "Good to go" by Blondinrikard Fröberg via Flickr under a CC-BY 2.0 license.


EPO ready for unitary patent

Waiting for the UK

According to a statement of the select committee the EPO has completed the legal preparations for the Unitary Patent. In particular, they have approved how the fees coming from the unitary patent are to be distributed among the participating member states.

At present, it doesn't look like many fees will be rolling in any time soon though. When the select committee will have their next meeting will depend on 'the development of the question of the entry into force of the UPP/UPC at the political level, within the framework of the European Union'. As long as the UK does not ratify the Agreement on a unified patent court, the unitary patent cannot start. The UK may or may not do so, but no news is forthcoming from that front. At the latest the select committee will reconvene in March 2017.


Photo by Unsplash via Pixabay, under a CC0 license; no changes were made to the photo.