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Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at the CIPA seminar “The Unitary Patent and the UPC” with Alan Johnson of Bristows LLP and Tim Roberts. A copy of the slides for my section of the talk is enclosed below along with some links to additional information covered in the talk (the Poland Deloitte report and some views on the impact of the Scottish Referendum).
My section of the talk (the slides of which can be accessed here) focussed on the unitary patent, as opposed to the court system.
Poland – As noted during the seminar Poland were strong advocates of the unitary patent system when they had the EU Council presidency but have subsequently got cold feet and have, as a consequence, not signed the Unified Patent Court agreement. The Polish position changed following a report from Deloitte in June 2012 into the potential impact of the unitary patent system on the Polish economy. Although I have not seen the original Deloitte report I note that this paper (“The European Unified Patent Court: Assessment and Implications of the Federalisation of the Patent System in Europe“) by Dimitris Xenos at the University of East London has a section (see 4.2.2) devoted to the report and its findings. The Deloitte report apparently looked at two options (joining the unitary system and staying outside the system) and worked out cost implications for three different scenarios based on the number of unitary patents that may be validated. The moderate scenario generated a net cost to the Polish economy of 19 Billion Euros if they joined the unitary patent system compared to staying outside!
Scotland – The impact that the Scottish Referendum could have on the unitary patent system is something of an unknown quantity. This post from the Scottish Constitutional Futures Forum outlines the alternative takes on the Referendum.
Translations – The translation regulation for the unitary patent system often seems to be the overlooked document (compared to the unitary patent regulation, the UPC agreement and the Rules of Procedure). The translation regulation however still has the potential to cause issues when the system goes live. Read this post from Charles Russell for the issues that may develop around the definition of an SME.
SPCs – For the latest on the unitary patent system and SPCs please read Alan’s post here.
For IPcopy’s full post on the “Maltese Muddle” situation please see here.
Mark Richardson 20 November 2013
IPcopy 
On EU expansion I would have thought that Montengro (a candidate country for EU expansion http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/countries/detailed-country-information/montenegro/index_en.htm) and Bosnia (potential candidate) are much more problematic than those listed as they aren’t yet signed up to the EPC.