On March 21, 2014, the European Commission adopted a new package of rules for the assessment of technology transfer agreements (TTAs) under EU competition law. The package consists of: (1) an updated Block Exemption Regulation for TTAs (TTBER) substituting the previous TTBER adopted in 2004; and (2) new guidelines to reflect the changes in the TTBER, the most recent case law and developments on the assessment of TTAs that fall outside the TTBER. The main changes focus on the scope of the TTBER, patent pools, termination clauses, exclusive grant-back obligations and settlements.
