Technology licensing under EU competition law: agreements and disagreements between block exemption regimes and guidelines

The paper examines the coordination between the block exemption regulation for technology transfer agreements (‘TTBER’), which expired on 30 April 2026, the 2025 reform proposal and the parallel and complementary EU antitrust regimes on vertical agreements and research and development, as well as the guidelines on horizontal cooperation. After a brief historical overview, the analysis focuses on three areas of regulatory misalignment: i) nonconvergent exemption criteria for hybrid agreements, straddling distribution and technology transfer, and definitions of contractual exclusivity that are not fully aligned, which may encourage opportunistic qualifications in order to fall under the most favourable antitrust regime; ii) substantial and temporal misalignments in the notion of potential competition, with possible incompatible outcomes between upstream cooperation in research and development and downstream licensing; iii) persistent margins of uncertainty regarding the elements of cooperation in licence agreements, in particular with regard to information exchange and coordinated negotiation between multiple licensees. In conclusion, the paper proposes targeted realignments and operational criteria aimed at strengthening the predictability of application and the consistency of the regulatory framework.

This article is in Italian.