In the laws of most jurisdictions in the world, IP licenses are an unnamed form of contract, most often of a hybride nature, for which no specific legal framework exists, save for rare exceptions. As a result, the formation, content and interpretation of IP licences call for the application of relevant norms from numerous other fields of the law, such as contract law, property law, commercial law, consumer law etc. Despite efforts of harmonisation at the international and regional levels, these related areas of the law remain to a large extent nationally determined, influenced by the legal tradition of each country, where significant differences appear between common law and civil law systems. A Research Handbook that highlights the main policy concerns and doctrinal debates on the subject of intellectual property licensing is therefore particularly timely.