A new regulation replaces the expired Technology Transfer Block Exemption, giving companies a clear framework to license patents and know-how without antitrust risk until 2038.
The European Commission has published Regulation (EU) 2026/877 today, establishing a new Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (TTBER) that will enter into force on May 1st, 2026. The previous regulation, Regulation No 316/2014, expired on April30th. Companies that rely on technology licensing agreements between two parties now have a renewed legal framework that grants automatic protection from EU antitrust rules, provided they stay within the regulation’s boundaries.
The core threshold rules remain the same as before. When both parties to a licence agreement compete with each other in the relevant market, the combined market share of both firms must not exceed 20 percent. When they do not compete, neither party may individually hold more than 30 percent of their respective market. These caps determine whether a licensing deal qualifies for the block exemption without any case-by-case review by competition authorities.
The regulation covers technology transfer agreements where one party licences the right to produce goods or services using another party’s technology, including patents, utility models, design rights, software copyrights, trade secrets, and other related rights. The block exemption does not apply to technology pools, where multiple companies assemble packages of patents for joint licensing, nor to licensing negotiation groups. Those arrangements fall outside the scope and must be assessed under general competition law principles.
The new TTBER also excludes so-called hardcore restrictions. These include clauses that fix the prices at which a licensee sells products to third parties, allocate entire markets or customer groups between competitors, or limit the licensee’s ability to challenge the validity of the licensed intellectual property. Grant-back obligations, where a licensee must assign or exclusively licence improvements back to the licensor, are excluded only in specific circumstances that the regulation defines precisely.
Existing agreements concluded before May 1st, 2026 that complied with Regulation No 316/2014 but do not fully satisfy the new rules benefit from a transitional period running until April 30th, 2027. After that date, all agreements must comply with the new regulation or risk losing the automatic exemption. The new TTBER applies until April 30th, 2038, giving businesses a stable 12-year planning horizon for technology licensing strategies across the EU single market.
