Summary

The licensing of industrial property, as a type of intellectual property, is an important mechanism for knowledge transfer. The licence agreement is the legal basis for the exploitation of intellectual property rights belonging to third parties. Therefore, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of licensing.

According to the preamble of the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), intellectual property rights are private rights. This is reflected in the principle that the regulation of intellectual property turnover (assignment, transfer, pledge) and legal protection are subject to general principles of private law and that similar legal relationships are regulated in a similar way. The intellectual property regulation is hereby criticised in the legal literature for being inconsistent and lacking a coherent concept. The authors agree with the criticism.

There has been a move towards a coherent concept since Estonia regained its independence with the adoption of intellectual property laws. In the event of industrial property turnover, the process is expected to be completed with the adoption of the draft Industrial Property Code, which will allow for a coherent regulation for the entire industrial property. The aim of the article is to provide conceptual input to the drafting of the Industrial Property Code as far as the regulation of industrial property licencing agreements is concerned. The authors analyse the legal relevance of the registration of an industrial property licence agreement in the context of the validity of the licence agreement, the renunciation of industrial property, the collision of licence agreements, and the transfer of the object of industrial property. For the sake of conciseness of the analysis, the authors focus on trade mark, patent, and industrial design law.