What kind of licenses are there?

Questions you have to ask yourself when deciding upon the type of license are:
Does the license agreement contain an exclusive license?

An exclusive license prevents the party granting the rights (the "licensor") from granting those rights to others. During negotiations, the party receiving the license (the "licensee") should consider trying to obtain the right of exclusivity in order to prevent competitors from using the intellectual property. A licensor that is being pressed to grant exclusivity may want to arrive at a middle ground between total exclusivity and non-exclusivity. Some compromises between the extremes of full exclusivity and non-exclusivity are: • a license that is exclusive only within a specific geographic territory,
• a license that is exclusive only within a given field of expertise,
• a license that is exclusive for several months or years, but less than the entire term of the license agreement.

Of course, if an exclusive license of any sort is being considered, the licensor should first determine whether the licensee is seeking exclusivity that not only would restrict third parties but also would prevent the licensor from itself using the intellectual property for its own internal purposes. This should be carefully clarified in the license agreement.

Does the licensee agreement contain the right to make developments based upon the licensed work?

A licensor negotiating a license contract may want to prevent the prospective licensee from making developments based upon the licensed intellectual property. On the other hand, the licensee's plans may include trying to improve upon the intellectual property by making such developments. The parties should understand each other's intentions and make sure to reach an understanding that can be easily put down on paper in the licensing agreement.

Does the license agreement include the right to sublicense?

The right to sublicense is the right of the licensee to stand in the licensor's shoes by having an entitlement to grant a license to the intellectual property to outsiders. You might think that including this right is obvious, but it is not necessarily included in all agreements. For example, if a licensee wants to use the intellectual property for internal research purposes only, then it would not necessarily want the right to sublicense the property.

If the right to sublicense will be agreed to, the licensor may want to qualify the right to sublicense in a variety of ways, such as a limitation on sublicensing within a specific geographic territory. The licensee needs to remember that even if it has the right to sublicense, it can only sublicense the rights it has been granted and no more. |4|

Reference
|4| http://www.darwinmag.com/read/040104/legal.html