European countries have pursued the project of creating a Unitary Patent and a Unified Patent Court (UPC), since the early seventies. Success seemed within reach in 2013 when the international Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA) was concluded and subsequently ratified by several states. However, in 2017 the project came to a grinding halt in the biggest contracting state, Germany, when a single patent practitioner filed a complaint against the national law ratifying the UPCA. With a 5:3 majority decision the German Constitutional Court confirmed that the law is void. Read more about this decision here.
