Last week, on 14th May, the Intellectual Property Act 2014 enabling the Secretary of State to make arrangements to establish the Unified Patent Court in the UK (See section 17 of the Act) was given the Royal Assent.
The Bill had been initiated by the House of Lords, which approved it in July 2013, followed by the House of Commons in March 2014.
It is now expected that the IP Act’s provisions will start to come into force from 1 October 2014, with all measures implemented by late 2015.
This new step towards the ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement is especially important as the United Kingdom is one of the three countries, with France and German, which must ratify the UPC Agreement for it to come into effect.