License Agreement Disputes:

On Sunday, October 20, Robins Kaplan partners David Prange and Benjamen Linden lead a session titled, “License Agreement Disputes: Insights and Lessons Learned from Litigation and Trial on Licensing Language Pitfalls” at the 2024 Licensing Executives Society Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

Session Description:

Agreement language matters, and time and again parties end up in litigation when the language of their agreements proves ambiguous. In many cases, the ambiguity could have been avoided during drafting, and instead, the ambiguous contract leads to litigation, including potentially ruined relationships and legal bills. Sometimes small changes to language, or a careful extra eye in review, is all that is needed to avoid a dispute.

What should the drafted look out for, and particularly when the parties contemplate a long-term relationship that may involve multiple contracts? Such relationships present some unique challenges when trying to craft language that will age gracefully, provide flexibility to the relationship, and control any later potential dispute. This presentation considers several recently resolved cases, some of which we were involved in, that concluded during litigation and trial. The presentation identifies specific lessons applicable to contract drafting on the subject of language use, the relationship of multiple contract relationships, dispute resolution provisions, and license scope control to identify better contract drafting techniques.