Since March, the rate at which European patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) are converted to Unitary Patents has risen from 18% to 24.3%, an increase of 35%. The figures provided by the EPO, indicate that this increase has occurred across all technologies, but the rate of increase has been far more significant in some technology areas than others, indicating that reluctance to use the Unitary patent system in such areas is declining.The graph above illustrates the current rates of use of the Unitary patent in different technology areas. The different colours in the graph correspond to the EPO’s broad technology areas: Electricity (Dark Blue), Chemistry and Life Sciences (Grey), Instruments (Orange), Mechanical Engineering (Yellow) and Other Fields (Light Blue).Compared with 4 months ago, the overall ordering of adoption of the Unitary patents in different technical fields is little changed. However, the proportion of patents being granted which have been converted to Unitary Patents has increased considerably.Civil engineering and Furniture remain the areas of technology where Unitary patents are most popular. The increase in take-up in these fields from 40% to 51.4% in the case of Civil Engineering and from 30% to 38.8% amounts to increases of about 30% in both fields, only slightly behind the average 35% increase of take up Unitary Patents across the board.More dramatic increases in uptake have occurred in other technical areas, in particular Semiconductors where the rate of uptake has nearly doubled from 7.3% in March to 14.4% in July.Uptake has increased by 50% in Polymers (previously 9.2%, now 14.2%), Audio Visual (previously 9.2%, now 14%), and Computers (previously 9.8%, now 15.7%) where uptake was previously relatively low, as well as areas where uptake was already previously higher such as Thermal Processes (previously 24.5%, now 36.6%) and Medical Technology (previously 24.4%, now 37.5%).A notable outlier in this more general increase in enthusiasm for the use of the Unitary patent is IT Methods, which remains the area of technology in which the uptake for Unitary patents remains the lowest at 7.3%. Although this is an increase on the 6.4% uptake rate previously reported in March, this change only amounts to an increase of 14%, less than half of the average of 35% across all technologies.The significant increases in the use of the Unitary patent in the last few months indicates that many more companies are now choosing to convert at least some of their European patents into Unitary patents. This will ultimately lead to an increase in the numbers of patents which are subject to the jurisdiction of the Unified Patent Court as Unitary patents are always subject to the jurisdiction of the Court and cannot be opted-out from the jurisdiction.However, it is also clear that in the majority of technical fields, at least for the time being, most patents will remain European patents.