This monograph deals with some of the problems under U.S. antitrust law that may be encountered in international patent and know-how licencing.

This is the second edition of the Antitrust Section's handbook on the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission's Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property. Like its predecessor, this volume provides a description of the enforcement agencies' antitrust policy with respect to the licensing of patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and know-how. It also is updated to reflect the pertinent developments since the agencies issued their Guidelines seven years ago. Since 1995, the agencies have initiated a wide variety of enforcement actions involving intellectual property and have pursued claims ranging from alleged price fixing among patent holders to allegedly anticompetitive settlements of infringement litigation. This book discusses these enforcement actions and the recent judicial decisions in this area and also provides some historical perspective on the agencies' current policy with respect to the licensing of intellectual property. The book includes the complete text of the 1995 Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property.

In modern markets innovation is at least as great a concern as price competition. The book discusses how antitrust policy and patent and copyright laws interact to create market dynamics that affect both competition and innovation. Antitrust and intellectual property policies for the most part are complementary, sharing common goals of promoting innovation and economic welfare. In some cases, however, their distinct approaches, one based on competition and the other on exclusion, come into conflict. As antitrust authorities focus increasingly on ensuring that firms do not interfere with innovation by rivals or impede the pace of technological progress in an industry, they necessarily must confront difficult questions about the strength and scope of intellectual property rights. When should private property rights give way to public competition objectives? When is it appropriate to remedy anticompetitive outcomes through access to protected intellectual property? How does antitrust enforcement or competition itself affect incentives to innovate? Leading economists and lawyers address these questions from both US and EU perspectives in discussing salient antitrust cases involving intellectual property rights such as Microsoft, Magill, Kodak, IMS and Intel.

Misuse is an increasingly important topic because of the central role intellectual property plays in our economy. The consequences of a misuse finding are severe: unenforceability of the patent or copyright involved, and defense to a suit to recover royalties in a license. The defense continues to arise in patent cases, has led to the dismissal of several recent copyright cases, and is now being asserted in trademark cases. The misuse defense thus represents a nexus of intellectual property and antitrust law and has the potential to affect business practices involving computer copyrights and other areas highly relevant in today's economic environment. This timely handbook covers the origin and development of the misuse doctrine, the debate about its scope and existence in relation to antitrust law, and its present status in patent, copyright, and trademark law. It also gives practical insights into how the doctrine affects both licensing and litigation practice.

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