UPC's December Deadline Pushed Back

2017/06/09

The introduction of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) has been postponed because some countries have not yet ratified the Agreement. In January this year, the UPC preparatory committee announced that it was “working under the assumption” that the provisional application phase would start at the end of spring 2017, “presumably in May”, meaning that the court could become operational in December. However, Germany and the UK have still to ratify the Agreement, which requires 13 signatories including those two countries plus France before the UPC can launch. The UK government gave the green light to ratify the UPC Agreement in November 2016, but the government has yet to do so because of the general election on June 8.

Source: WIPR