The majority of EU Member States have agreed to establish unitary patents (UPs), being single patents whose territorial scope will extend to all participating countries, and a Unified Patent Court (UPC), which will have exclusive jurisdiction over both UPs and, subject to a transitional “opt-out”, existing and future (non-unitary) European patents in force in the participating countries.

The new patent is provided by an EU regulation (the UP Regulation). It will be obtained via a single designation following the grant of a patent application under the existing European Patent Convention (EPC). The new court is established by an international agreement between the participating countries, signed on 19 February 2013 (the UPC Agreement).

The UP was intended to cover all the EU Member States and in time it may. However, Spain, Poland and Croatia have not to date joined up. The 24 UP participating EU Member States are therefore currently: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. However, signature of the UPC Agreement does not guarantee participation in the UP and UPC – ratification is required.

Whilst the UK government had initially ratified the UPC Agreement, this ratification was later withdrawn. The UK will therefore not be a UP participating state.