Licensing
Licenses, franchises, and technical
joint ventures are mechanisms for buying, selling, and leasing
technology, intellectual property, know-how and trade secrets. In
contrast to a plain transfer of rights, the owner of the rights, (the
Licensor), retains his ownership on the monopoly despite of granting
permission to make, use, and/or sell a product, a process, a design or
perform actions to a third party (the Licensee).
Agreements for such co-operation must
comprise a balance of mutual interest, based on fairness to all
parties. During the life span of a contract many conflicting
situations will arise. Such disputes can only be solved if both
parties remain interested in working together.
Negotiations &
Contracts
Negotiations & Contracts
When one party makes
a proposal or drafts a contract the following question should always be
asked: "Would we accept the same contractual clauses if we were
approached from the other side?" If this is not the case, our best
advice is to tear the drafted contract to pieces and to start drafting
again from scratch.