The UK Government will no longer seek to participate in the Unitary Patent or Unified Patent Court (UPC) system despite ratification of the agreement in 2018.  

We would like to advise our clients that the UPC is a completely separate patent system to the current European patent system (the EPC) which remains in place and is unaffected by Brexit and this announcement (please refer to our previous post).

Furthermore, the UPC has not yet come into effect anywhere. A complaint against Germany's potential ratification is pending in front of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht, BVerfG) and is scheduled to be decided later on this year. Significant hurdles therefore remain before any version of the UPC can come into effect. Should it do so, CIPA states that: 

"British companies and SMEs will still be able to use the UPC if and when it comes into operation and, more importantly, the Rights of Audience of British-based European Patent Attorneys are unaffected by the Government’s decision".