There has long been a dispute among both lawyers and economists concerned with antitrust as to whether or not the grant of patent rights is inherently anti-competitive. Even among those who hold the view that the patent system is either pro-competitive on balance or a necessary evil, there is a division of opinion as to whether licences of patent rights are capable of anti-competitive effects independent of those created by the patent itself. It is argued on the one side that patent licences, whatever their terms, add nothing to the patent itself, so that the regulation of licences is misguided; on the other side, it is argued that the terms of patent licences are perfectly capable of extending the patentee’s monopoly rights beyond those anticipated by the patent system. The attitude of the European Commission toward patent licensing was at first in line with the latter of these opposing views, but for the last two decades the Commission has adopted a far stricter approach and the decisions of that body established that many of the standard terms of patent licences offended Art. 85(1). To provide some certainty in an essential area of economic activity, the Commission finally produced, in 1984,