The European Commission and other EU/EEA institutions are encouraging R&D by making exceptions to the strict competition rules in a Regulation on a block exemption.
The Regulation may not necessarily cover the entire agreement (e.g. price fixing, market sharing and limitation of production and others), due to the some restrictions on competition.
The clauses on the ownership of secret know-how and intellectual property rights must be drafted very precisely by the parties of the R&D agreement.
This part of the agreement is very important, since a lot of disputes arise and good cooperation might be lost due to the imperfections, omissions, and impressiveness in the clauses.
It is advisable to the parties to consider all possible unclear situations and ensure clauses, especially on the following: ^1 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/research-and-development-R-D.html Archived 2016-10-19 at the Wayback Machine ^2 Rigault, Didier.