The purpose of this book is to provide a practical guide to the negotiation and drafting of international agency, distribution and manufacturing agreements for the supply of goods. The book is structured around five main precedents covering agency, distribution outside the EEC, distribution inside the EEC, selective distribution systems, and manufacturing licences. The precedents are drafted in a modern style, commencing with definitions, and eschewing “lawyerese”. They are eminently suitable for use on word-processors, therefore. There is a clause-by-clause commentary. Unfortunately, while this scheme is in many ways helpful to busy practitioners, it offers pitfalls for the unwary.

Thus, EEC competition law is “flagged” at various points, but a draftsman who knew little about it could find the short comments on it either unhelpful or, worse still, misleading, It is never possible to approach EEC competition law mechanically, as we have been used to doing in relation to the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1976. At the end of the day, you must always sit back and consider the effect that the agreement as a whole might have on trade between Member States and, equally importantly, where the agreement is part of a series of similar agreements, the effect of a network of such agreements. Again, in the manufacturing licence precedent (Chapter 7), the two most important matters from a commercial point of view—how to fix a proper royalty payment, and what from the licensor’s and licensee’s points of view an appropriate strategy should be for the purposes of taxation—are scarcely touched on. Indeed, although, as noted above, a practical guide to the negotiation of licences was promised, it is never delivered, and it is difficult to see how, within the scheme