Relevance of License of Intellectual Property Rights with Special Reference to Indian Competition Perspectives

Abstract:     
The Licensing of Intellectual Property Rights constitutes an effective business strategy to permit third parties to exploit the IPR products. Eventually, there are both positive and negative implications of the aspects of licensing. There are various forms of restraints or anti-competitive practices in licensing. Two best devices can be sought out in preventing such practices which are compulsory licenses and parallel importing. In both United States and European Community, there have been well defined Antitrust Guidelines and Block Exemption Rules regarding up to what licensing will be permitted not prejudicially affect the relevant market shares. A developing country like India lacks proper Research and Development Facilities and high market barriers create adversial impact upon the market entrants to access the technology or products from Indian dominant firms or those who having Joint Ventures with overseas companies. The enactment of new Indian Competition Act of 2002 on basis of the Raghavan Committee Report (2000) repealed the Monopolies Restrictive Trade Practices Act of 1969. The provisions of compulsory licensing incorporated in the Patents Act Copyright Act etc have been a welcoming approach. Being the main regulatory body, the Competition Commission of India have the authority to supervise for better coordination between competitive aspects of various forms of IPRs by laying down regulations for curbing any kind of abuse aspired from foreign jurisdictions.

This paper, thus, attempts to focus into following issues - To find how far the licensing requirement is needed to curtail anti-competition of IPR by dominant firms. Analyzing US & EC Licensing Rules. How to better provide licensing arrangements in Indian Competition Regime at par with US & EC.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 19

Keywords: antitrust guidelines, licensing arrangements

working papers series