Intellectual Property/Licensing - European Union Level

Commission updates guidance on standardisation agreements in new horizontal guidelines

On 14 December 2010, the Commission adopted revised horizontal guidelines laying down detailed rules on the assessment of co-operation between competitors. In particular, the section of the guidelines covering standardisation agreements has undergone significant revision and now contains a much more detailed analysis of the specific features of, and competition risks resulting from, standard-setting arrangements. In comparison with the existing version (published in 2001), the new guidelines set out far-reaching recommendations for the internal procedures of standard-setting bodies by taking on board the Commission's recent experiences in, among others, the Rambus and Qualcomm cases (see VBB on Competition Law, Vol. 2009, No. 6 and Vol. 2007, No. 11).