License Agreements in General

License agreements are used for commercial utilization of intellectual property rights. Further information regarding intellectual property rights is available in [3.4 Intellectual Property Rights]. A license agreement is an agreement which grants a right of use to the licensor’s intellectual property rights defined in the agreement.

The scope of the right of use to be granted may vary considerably. The license agreement may, for instance, grant the right to further develop and license the intellectual property rights subject to the agreement. The license agreement may in practice cover any kind of rights of use. For instance, patented inventions and software subject to copyright are often transferred by license agreements, which set out the responsibilities, use restrictions and payments to be made to the licensor. The license fee may be, for example, an annual payment, or profit-based payment.

Title to the licensed intellectual property rights remains with the licensor.