License transactions play a leading role in the modern information economy. They provide a critical legal mechanism for both technological and business model innovation. They also underlie the creation, dissemination, and use of intellectual property and other intangible assets that give the information economy its name. There has been much attention paid to the creation and protection of information assets but less focus on the transactions (licenses) that bring them to the marketplace. This is one reason we decided that the time was ripe for a new book on this subject. This book is not the first to discuss license transactions. We believe it is the first, however, to comprehensively address licensing in the many contexts in which it arises in the information economy, e.g., mass market consumer software transactions, product development, open source software, multimedia, patent pools, franchising, merchandising, university technology transfers, government contracts, financing, corporate acquisitions, litigation, taxation, bankruptcy, and antitrust. It is also the first book to provide detailed treatment of both the theory and the practice of licensing. Some books focus on drafting licenses and others focus on legal theory; our book strives to be comprehensive in discussing both the theory and the practice of licensing law. It contains many cases and many samples of license provisions. This dual focus comes out of our conviction that the best licensing lawyers are those who have mastered both aspects of licensing.