Licence: The Court of Justice of the European Union holds that the obligation imposed on the licensee to pay royalties is not contrary the Article 101 TFEU even if the license is annulled or if the use of the licensed technology – even without license – would not have constituted a counterfeit, as long as the licensee can freely terminate the agreement, subject to a reasonable notice (Genentech / Hoechst et Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. The judgment on the question referred for a preliminary ruling follows the question referred by the Paris Court of Appeal concerning the compatibility with Article 101 TFEU of the practice of requiring a licensee, party to a patent licensing agreement, to pay a royalty when the patent has been annulled. The question is extended by the Court to the case in which the licensee is required to pay royalties pursuant to the contract, whereas it appears that the use of the technology would have been unlikely - even in the absence of a licence - to constitute infringement. This is not the first time that the enforcement of intellectual property rights has been