This page presents an international research project on intellectual property licensing that has been launched by Prof. Jacques de Werra which shall materialize in the publication of a Research Handbook on Intellectual Property Licensing (to be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in 2012).

The goal of the project and of the Research Handbook on Intellectual Property Licensing is to explore and analyse key aspects of the law governing intellectual property licensing contracts and to provide a compilation of opinions from experts coming from different jurisdictions and legal systems on what shall constitute essential elements of intellectual property licensing law.

The content of the book describing the chapters and their respective author(s) is available here.

A critical aspect of the project is that it should express policy views on the need to regulate certain aspects of intellectual property licensing contracts and to adopt default or even mandatory legal rules governing intellectual property licensing contracts. One of the issues to be considered in this context is whether the principle of freedom of contract (under which the parties are free to structure their contractual relationships in the way they feel appropriate) should be limited in certain circumstances which shall then be analysed and specified.

The project and the book aim at offering a scientific contribution to the formulation of global policies governing intellectual property licensing contracts.