Licensing agreements and competition law: An overview of EU and national case law

Introduction The application of competition law as it relates to the licensing of intellectual property rights (“IPRs”) remains a topic of heated debate and development. Previous articles in e-Competitions have outlined such developments and trends at EU and Member State level and we aim in this foreword to provide an overview of recent trends and interesting cases over the last few years. We are grateful to e-Competitions for access to its database of leading Member State cases, on the basis of which we have been able to identify the selection of cases between 2014 and 2017 discussed below. Below we first outline some of the key themes and developments in the area of IP licensing and competition law over recent years. We then summarise some of the more interesting case examples we