ITPEC FE Subject A October 2025 Question 40
Which of the following is an appropriate explanation of comprehensive patent cross-licensing?
Explanation
Companies mutually license their patents in specified technology or product fields — cross-licensing is mutual permission, and "comprehensive" means it covers a whole field rather than named patents.
Under a comprehensive cross-license, each company may use all of the other's patents in the agreed fields, often without paying per patent. This avoids infringement disputes and lets both develop products that inevitably use each other's inventions.
Answer (c)
Why not others:
- •(a) — sharing the cost of registering patents is a cost-sharing agreement; it grants no right to use anyone's patents.
- •(b) — publishing source code free for anyone to improve and redistribute describes open source software, which concerns copyright, not patent licences.
- •(d) — stopping a rival's manufacturing is enforcing a patent through an injunction, the opposite of granting permission.
Key rule: A licence grants permission to use a right; cross-licensing is that permission granted in both directions.
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