Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what due consideration was given to alternatives to the Unified Patent Court before the announcement of the proposed ratification of the UK's membership of the Unified Patent Court.

The Government considered its announcement to become a signatory of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court very carefully, in the light of the benefit to business in being able to protect their patent rights across Europe in a more streamlined way and the value of having a division of the court in London.

The announcement should not be seen as pre-empting the UK’s objective in the forthcoming negotiations with the EU and is without prejudice to the UK’s future position on the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union on the UK has left the EU. The Unified Patent Court is established by a non-EU Intergovernmental Agreement which is currently only open to EU member states.

The announcement demonstrates that the UK will continue our approach of constructive engagement as long as we remain a member of the EU.