ipcopy
ipcopyamelia
ipcopyaz
ipcopyben
ipcopydev
ipcopyeleni
ipcopyemily
ipcopymanuela
ipcopymark
ipcopyrich
As previously noted on IPcopy here, Italy signed the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court back in February but were not “fully paid” up members of the unitary patent package because they hadn’t joined the enhanced cooperation regime on the unitary patent.
We have previously heard that Italy was considering joining the enhanced cooperation regime but according to a news update here some more positive noises have been heard regarding Italy becoming part of the club.
According to the news article at the link above the EU Affairs Minister (Enzo Moavero Milanesi) indicated on 10 July to the EU Policy Committee of the Chamber of Deputies that the Italian government is minded to join the enhanced cooperation regime.
The president of an Italian confederation of businesses (Confindustria) also stated in a similar hearing on 9 July that his confederation also were favourably inclined towards both the unified patent court and Italian participation in enhanced cooperation.
Mark Richardson 19 July 2013
IPcopy 
Curiously, for the Italian industries it would be much better if Italy did not join the unitary patent club, since they would be able to file unitary patents anyway and to get also the compensation under Art. 5 UPTA, while the foreign competitors would still have to translate European patents into Italian (so also easier to understand than if written in English, German or French). At any rate all Italian applicants have also an Italian patent application in order to receive the EPO search for free.
As only half of the European patent are validated in Italy now, joining the enhanced cooperation would mean that the Italian industries would face twice the patents of the competitors, which are not even interested in the protection in Italy for these additional patents.
In 2012 only about 1,8 % of European patent applications had an Italian applicant.
It is worth noting that the original news from Società Italiana Brevetti is quite critical with regard to conclusion reached by the Italian government. This is not something that could have been observed in the past in other countries.