Comparative competition analysis of the effect of technology transfer agreements for EU, US and Turkish legal systems

Innovation is an imortant source of new goods and processes. It increases the competition. Many technology licences are create competition and are therefore encouraged by authorities. However, in the legal areas the link between IPR and Competition Laws makes the issue important and the discussion permanent, because both policies have often conflicting objectives. Although, both IPR and Competition Law are complementary to the pursuit of consumer welfare, they use different methods. IPR Laws will attain consumer welfare by not encouraging the innovator's welfare, but ensuring an incentive to reward its effort, and by promoting technological improvement to the ultimate profit of the consumers. On the contrary, Competition Law performs this task by providing the best quality products of the lowest prices by ensuring that competition is protected as the source of efficient markets. The purpose of this thesis is to examine to what extent should Competition Policy intervene with IPR Laws. This thesis intends to investigate the principles guiding the legal schemes of technology licensing agreements in two judicial powers EU, US and to reveal similarities and differences between them and to determine where Turkey competition law is at last. The findings show that while the most important motivation for US Competition Laws is efficiency and free trade policies, the EU Competition Law is based on the development of an integrated European Market. Turkey has adopted the EU regularity. However, the existing regulations are subject to the 772/2004 EU Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and haven't revised the last revisions.