Patent Pools and Other Forms of Aggregation

This paper recalls the EU antitrust provisions relating to patent pools and standard setting, the conclusions of an expert group tasked with the question of identifying what if anything the public sector should do to promote aggregation of patents to foster licencing of patents and reviews some recent academic papers of a theoretical and empirical nature. The broad observation is that patent pools remain pro-competitive and can foster licencing of technology in particular standard essential pate