As reported in our April 1995 Newsletter, it is the intention of the European Union to replace the current group exemptions relating to patent and know how licensing by a single regulation covering technology licensing. As noted in that Newsletter, the original patent license group exemption, due to expire on December 31, 1994, was extended up to June 30, 1995, in order to allow for finalization of the new regulation. The new regulation has still not been finalized and the original patent license group exemption has been extended again up to:

December 31, 1995.

Drafts of the new technology license regulation have been circulated and while in many respects these show an amelioration of the restrictions included in the black lists of the current patent license and know how license group exemptions, the Commission seems determined to restrict the applicability of any future technology license group exemption to situations wherein the parties control less than 40% of the market in the type of product covered by the agreement. This proposal has attracted substantial criticism from industry which takes the view that for any sizeable concern this would make it very difficult to determine whether a license agreement is or is not covered by the group exemption and will lead to the need to notify many more agreements to the Commission to obtain individual exemptions. For this reason, although at one point the Commission was intending to abolish the "opposition" provisions of the patent and know how group exemptions, it seems likely that these provisions will be retained so that parties may notify an agreement and if there is no adverse reaction by the Commission within a specified period, the exemption will be deemed to apply to that agreement by virtue of the Commission's silence. Even this, however, does not seem to be particularly satisfactory.