On 19 December 2018, the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) issued a brief end of year news summary Status of Unified Patent Court Project  on their website. The news note is the first update since 27 April 2018 when the Committee noted that two ratifications of the UPC Agreement (Latvia and the UK) had taken place.

An end of year summary from the UPC Chair, Alexander Ramsay, was also published last year on 22 December 2017, which took a more optimistic note commenting that, despite the recent filing of the German Constitutional Complaint, it was hoped that 2018 would bring ‘closure to our endeavours and the Unified Patent Court will become a reality providing benefit of growth and European competitiveness’. This year, with the uncertainty and the anticipation over Brexit and the German Complaint, the 2018 news note focuses on the continuing preparations for the UPC, the Provisional Application Phase and the 16 ratifications of the UPC Agreement that have taken place already.

In other ratification news this year, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the UK deposited their instruments of ratification of the UPC’s Protocol on Privileges and Immunities (PPI) and Bulgaria deposited its instrument of ratification of the UPC Agreement’s Protocol on Provisional Application (PPA) with the Secretariat.