Urgent crowd sourcing request-- "ugly" clauses in IP agreements

Alexander Tsoutsanis of DLA Piper has sent the following urgent request directed to Kat readers.

“Words will be words, but sometimes words end up in litigation, quite often in connection with interpreting agreements. Recent cases in the Netherlands have dealt with nitty-gritty questions such as whether a clause imposing a penalty sum 'per product' is to be calculated 'per item' or 'per category'. Another case came to grips with the issue of what a 'reserved sector' in a patent license actually means.

In connection with a teaching project for patent attorneys, Alexander Tsoutsanis is now crowd- sourcing vague and ambiguous clauses in IP agreements, both of the contentious (i.e. cease-and-desist declarations and settlement agreements) and non-contentious (joint-ventures, licenses and the like) kinds.

All clauses will be anonymized, no reference to any contracting parties will be made and are solely to be used for teaching purposes. If such clause has been mentioned in a published judgment, a case reference would also be appreciated. Please submit any clauses immediately (before 28 October, if possible) to alexander.tsoutsanis@dlapiper.com.”