The Competition Authority approves the regulation that allows research and development agreements between businesses

2025-11-24 12:52:00, Aktualitet CNA

The Competition Authority approves the regulation that allows research and

The Competition Authority has adopted a new regulation that allows certain research and development agreements between businesses, exempting these agreements from the prohibitions provided for in the competition law.

Under the conditions set out in the regulation, the research and development agreement must stipulate that all parties have full access to the final results of the joint or paid research and development for the purposes of further research and development and for exploitation purposes.

Access should include any intellectual property rights and know-how resulting from the agreement and this access should be granted as soon as the results of the research and development become available.

Where the research and development agreement provides that the parties compensate each other for granting access to the results for the purposes of further research and development or for exploitation purposes, the compensation must not be so high as to effectively prevent such access.

Research institutes, academic bodies or enterprises that provide research and development as a commercial service without normally being active in the exploitation of the results may agree to limit the use of the results to the purposes of further research and development.

Where parties limit their exploitation rights in accordance with this Regulation, in particular where they specialise in the context of exploitation, access to results for exploitation purposes may be restricted according to the circumstances.

The specified exception also applies to research and development agreements containing provisions relating to the transfer or licensing of intellectual property rights to one or more of the parties or to an entity established by the parties to carry out joint or paid research and development, or to the joint exploitation of the results, provided that these provisions are directly related to and necessary for the implementation of the agreement and do not constitute the main subject matter of the agreement.

Where two or more of the parties are competing undertakings, the exemption shall apply for the duration of the research and development if, at the time of conclusion of the agreement, the combined market share of the parties to the agreement does not exceed 25% in the relevant product and technology markets.

For research and development agreements where the results are jointly exploited, the exemption provided for in this Regulation shall continue to apply for 7 years from the moment when the contract products or contract technologies are first placed on the market.

Article 4 of the Law "On the Protection of Competition" prohibits all agreements that have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition in the market.

However, Article 6 of the law allows the Competition Commission to adopt regulations on certain categories of agreements that are exempt from the prohibition provided for in the law in question and the conditions that agreements must meet in order to benefit from the exemption from the prohibition./ Monitor