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LPC Law Notes Commercial and IP Notes

Ip Competition Law Notes

Updated Ip Competition Law Notes

Commercial and IP Notes

Commercial and IP

Approximately 100 pages

A collection of the best LPC Commercial and IP notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through twenty-nine LPC samples from outstanding students with the highest results in England and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor".

In short these are what we believe to be the strongest set of CLIP notes available in the UK this year. This collection of notes is fully updated fo...

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The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Commercial and IP Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Intellectual Property Rights

IP and Competition Law

The transfer of IP rights

  • IP rights can be traded through asset sale / share sale

  • Buyer’s objective = acquire the rights to use all IPR necessary to conduct the business in the same manner as the seller prior to the sale.

The Process of Technology Transfer

  • Due diligence: enquiries, searches – identify potential problem areas.

  • Evaluation: what is the significance of the IPRs to the business

  • Drafting of transfer agreement: define the IPRs being sold and agree the IP-specific warranties and special provisions such as licenses.

  • Transfer

  • Post completion matters: ensure that the buyer is properly recorded as the proprietor of IPRs assigned to him.

Competition Issues

  • IP rights restrict trade and competition [e.g. Patent – stops someone making / selling the machine]

  • Mostly concerning: Patents; Copyright and Trademarks

  • Terms of a IP license agreements can restrict trade also e.g. give licensee exclusive territory or stop licensee exporting from the territory

  • EU balancing act = provide rewards for creativity but stop IP rights harming competition within the single market.

  • Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; Art.101

Outlaws:

  1. Agreement / decision between undertakings

  2. Which may have an affect on trade between MS; and

  3. Which have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the EU

  • Must have appreciable effect!

  • A license agreement OR simply the bringing of proceedings to stop infringement of an IP right may infringe Article 101.

  • Potential problems – causing “affect on trade” [breaching S.101 – unduly restrictive of competition]

Territorial problems “X agrees to not appoint any licensees in France other than Y”
Price “Y will sell the machines at a price which X will determine”

  • Exception Art 101(3):

The provisions of paragraph 1 may, however, be declared inapplicable in the case of:

Any agreement, which contributes to improving the production or distribution of goods or to promoting technical or economic progress.

Technology Transfer Block Exemption [Regulation 2004]

  • Specific statutory exemption for IP agreements

  • Draft within the Block exemption to avoid infringing competition issues under Art.101

  • Only applies to certain sorts of IP rights agreements.

  1. Technological licensing agreements only - PATENTS / software / know how licensing agreements [invention type work! – this is the type of work EU is trying to protect][Article 1(b) definition]

  2. Ones that is for the purpose of providing services [i.e. not if it simply allows licensee the ability to do research / development work]

  3. Agreements between 2 parties [not technology pools – i.e. businesses get together and agree to share a pot of IP rights collectively

NB. Trademarks = Vertical Agreement Block Exemption

NB. Assignments – not so many restrictions so not likely to have anti-competative effect

Art.2 The Exemption:
Art.3:

Market share of parties [market share threshold

  • Market share test is different depending on whether the 2 parties are competitors or not.

  1. Art 3(1): Parties are competitors - lower threshold – combined MS must be less than 20% [Harder threshold to satisfy – do not encourage competitors to use the exemption to create a “non-compete” agreement....

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