Usually refers to the guidelines promulgated by the two U.S. competition enforcement agencies, the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or by the European Commission. Of particular interest in intellectual property are:
- the Antitrust Guidelines for the Licensing of Intellectual Property issued by the DOJ and FTC in 1995 (and are overdue for an update.)
- the European Commission Guidelines on the application of Article 81 of the EC Treaty to technology transfer agreements, 2004 O.J. C 101/2, which were updated in 2014 by the Guidelines on the application of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to technology transfer agreements.
The European Commission has also issued “block exemptions” which serve much of the same role as well as various guidelines, in particular the patent and know-how licensing block exemptions which were superseded by the technology transfer block exemptions known as the TTBER (there has been more than one version, the most recent is from 2014.)
The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has issued guidelines on patent and know-how licensing; joint R&D; patent pooling; franchising; and mergers. The Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has also issued a guidelines with respect to the licensing of intellectual property rights, mergers, resale price maintenance, as has the Taiwan Fair Trade Commission which has also issued a guideline on abusive warning letters (as well as advertisements and notices) with respect to patent, trademark and copyright infringement.