The European Commission has adopted updated EU competition rules covering technology licensing agreements, with the new framework due to take effect on 1 May 2026.
The changes revise the Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (TTBER) and accompanying guidelines that explain how EU competition law applies to technology transfer agreements, following a review of rules in place since 2014, the Commission said in a release on Thursday.
Technology transfer agreements are deals in which a company that owns technology rights — such as patents, design rights or software copyright — authorises another company to use those rights, usually through a licence.
The TTBER sets conditions under which certain technology licensing agreements are exempt from the EU’s ban on anti-competitive agreements under Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, with the guidelines intended to help businesses interpret the regulation and assess agreements that fall outside it.
Data licensing and group talks on licences
The revised guidelines include a new section on assessing data licensing agreements for production purposes under Article 101, including licensing of databases protected by copyright or the EU database right, the Commission said.
The update also addresses “licensing negotiation groups” — arrangements where technology users negotiate jointly with technology owners for licence terms — and sets out how the Commission will assess their potential effects on competition, including how to distinguish genuine negotiation groups from buyer cartels.
The Commission also said it had clarified and simplified parts of the rules, including how market share thresholds are applied when licensing happens before a technology is commercialised.
It added that it has further specified conditions for a “safe harbour” in the guidelines for technology pools — where multiple technology owners bundle rights into a package licensed to contributors and third parties — to limit that protection to pools that comply with Article 101.
