About The Intellectual Property and Competition Law Survey
Intellectual Property Rights and Competition Law have been described as an unhappy marriage. The former may be seen to promote monopolies whilst the latter is designed is oppose them. Despite these apparent differences the two are inextricably linked and all practitioners require to have an understanding of competition rules which affect exploitation of intellectual property rights. Competition law affects licence agreements.
In order to provide a better understanding of the relationship between IP and Competition Law the IP Practice Group felt it would be interesting and worthwhile to survey the membership of Lex Mundi on the affect of competition law on IP in their jurisdiction.
The survey was drawn up by Earl Gray (Simpson Grierson) and Fiona Nicolson (Maclay Murray & Spens) and initially dispatched to all members of the IP Practice Group. The intention was for the survey to concentrate on a number of particular aspects of competition/antitrust rules in respect of IP licence agreements and supply/distribution agreements, to determine to what degree there might be uniformity (or not) of application across members’ jurisdictions. Details of the matters covered by the survey are outlined in the Question Index below.
The level of response was very positive with 58 different jurisdictions providing responses.
Given the level of responses the results of the survey have been condensed into a user friendly format, which will hopefully give participants a reasonable flavour of the issues arising in difference jurisdictions without being too overwhelming.
The results of the survey are not intended to represent a comprehensive guide to Competition Law in each Lex Mundi member jurisdiction but rather provide an insight into the differing treatment of key provisions found in licence and distributions agreement. The IP Practice Group would stress that the results of the survey should only be used as an indication and advice should always be sought from the appropriate Lex Mundi member.
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