<p>Patent law continues to evolve as it always has, but few would have predicted some of the developments which took place after the 18th edition of this work was published in early 2016. There was no hint that the doctrine of equivalents might come back into play; but following the landmark decision of the Supreme Court in Lilly v Actavis, the point is now a regular feature of trials in the Patents Court. Litigation about telecommunications patents was not uncommon in this jurisdiction but since the rulings on FRAND in Unwired Planet v Huawei and Conversant v ZTE &amp; Huawei the number of cases has grown dramatically. The outcome of the Supreme Court&#39;s ruling in those cases is awaited. The split decision on infringement in Warner Lambert v Generics means that uncertainty remains about the correct approach to second medical use claims. The Unified Patent Court was not a certainty, but it was a sufficiently likely prospect as of 1 January 2016 that we included a chapter on its practice and procedure. However, now that the UK has left the EU and given the recent ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court, the Editorial Board felt that to include a chapter on the UPC in this edition of the work could be described as optimistic.</p>
