The EU Commission adopts R&D block exemption regulation

On the 14 December 2010 that the European Commission published its new horizontal guidelines (see article above and also the Cartels and Horizontal Agreements section of this newsletter), it also adopted a new R&D Block Exemption Regulation (“New R&D BER”). While the New R&D BER mostly retains the structure of the previous BER, there are several changes of note. In particular, the Commission has extended the scope of the New R&D BER to cover “paid-for research” agreements, where one party finances the R&D activities carried out by the other party. Previously, the