Impact of Antitrust Restrictions on Formation and Performance of Cross-boarder License Agreements

This master dissertation is aimed to identify the specifics of the formation and performance of cross-border licensing agreements taking into account the antitrust restrictions provided by the laws of various countries. The master dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion and a bibliography. Chapter I covers the relationship balance between the issues of intellectual property law and competition law from the theoretical point of view, and examines the issues of practical embodiment of that issues at the international and national levels. Chapter II identifies common approaches to the evaluation of anti-competitive licensing agreements and particularities of certain types of licensing practices. Chapter III is devoted to the peculiarities of the influence of antimonopoly restrictions on the formation and performance of licensing agreements, taking into account the cross-boarder nature of these relations. Based on this research the following conclusions were made: firstly, the antimonopoly regulation of license agreements has the dynamics to grade up to antitrust restrictions imposed on other civil law contracts, with certain exceptions; secondly, international regulation leaves a strong discretion for domestic antitrust regulation of licensing agreements, therewith no serious discrepancy found of application of antitrust restrictions on licensing practices generally; thirdly, most western jurisdictions acknowledge the arbitrability of the antitrust claims, with certain exceptions.