May contractors grant exclusive licences to knowledge to third parties?
The FP6 rules do not contain any explicit regulations on exclusive rights. Therefore, a contractor is allowed to license his knowledge as long as he does not infringe his obligations towards the project partners as set out in the underlying Participation Rules, the EC contract and partner agreements (e.g. the consortium agreement). Special attention should be paid to the character of an exclusive licence. Through an exclusive licence, the licensee acquires an exclusive right to exploit the invention. Usually, the licensor himself will be excluded from the possibility of using the subject matter of the licence. This means that contractors will suffer restrictions if a third party owns an exclusive licence because this prevents the licensor from giving his partners access to the knowledge in question. Consequently, exclusive licences are only usually permitted when the other contractors do not have compulsory access rights to the IP rights in question. To avoid conflict, contractors shou
