UK Announces Ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement

Sam Gyimah, the UK Minister for Intellectual Property, has announced that the UK has today ratified the UPCA.

The UK becomes the sixteenth state to ratify the UPCA. The other countries are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.

The UK ratification leaves Germany as the only remaining country which needs to ratify the UPCA for it to come into force (on the first day of the fourth month after Germany deposits its instrument of ratification). The German ratification has been held up by a constitutional challenge reported here.