Intellectual Property Assignments and Licensing
Assignments are transfers of intellectual property between parties. Licences are permissions for one party to use the intellectual property of another party. Both types of agreement generally need to be registered at Intellectual Property Offices in respect of the registered rights to which they correspond.
There are several situations where an intellectual property licence can occur.
Intellectual property licences often occur as a solution to a clash of intellectual property rights between parties. For example a licence agreement may be negotiated as an amicable settlement to a patent infringement dispute, or a trade mark infringement dispute or design infringement.
Licences may also occur as a result of University spin outs, where a University, or Institute, as owner of some intellectual property rights, licences those rights to a new venture.
Licences can also occur in straight forward commercial collaborations or technology sharing agreements.
A further licensing situation, where the classic small individual inventor has an idea and licences this to a larger corporation occurs more rarely.
In some circumstances, where the licence is of a specialist nature, or the licence occurs in the context of a wider commercial contract, we may refer you to individual specialists with particular experience of specialised licensing, in one of our colleague general law firms. Similarly for contracts which are really franchise agreements or distribution agreements, technical collaboration agreements, or joint venture agreements.
Our assignments and licensing group have experience of:
- Recording patents, trade marks and design licences at national or regional Intellectual Property Offices.
- Drafting licence agreements as part of settlements of intellectual property disputes.
- Drafting licence agreements for university spin outs.
- Negotiating and drafting licensing agreement for exploitation of patent rights by individual inventors and small to medium sized enterprises.
Members of this group include: