The treatment of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and associated firm practices by leading competition agencies has undergone far-reaching changes in the working lifetimes of many current practitioners, including ourselves. In most jurisdictions, antiquated ‘per se’ approaches to IPR licensing practices previously viewed as irredeemably harmful to competition have long given way to ‘rule of reason’ or case-by-case approaches that require consideration of potential justifications and/or ameliorating circumstances or, at the very least, employ structural screens to avoid unnecessary policy interventions.1 At the same time, important enforcement actions have been taken, in diverse jurisdictions, against a broad range of other practices implicating the role of intellectual property (IP), including mergers deemed likely to undermine incentives for innovation; anti-competitive settlements in patent litigation cases relating to prospective entry by generic suppliers in the pharmaceutical sector; ‘hold-ups’ involving undeclared patents in standard-setting processes; and unilateral abuses of market power derived (at least in part) from IPRs, in high-tech industries.2