<img src="https://publish-01.obsidian.md/access/744ac39d33cabbc297b91373bfcac24d/bin/images/Iceland_map.png" alt="Iceland" class="page-header-sidebar-image"> Iceland has provisions in its legislation relating to the granting of compulsory licences. These can be found in Part VI of the Patents Act No. 17/1991.  A compulsory licence may be granted in the following scenarios: (1) An invention patented in Iceland has not been worked to a reasonable extent; there are no shown legitimate reasons for the failure to work the invention; and three years have elapsed from the grant of the patent and four years have elapsed from the filing of the patent application. (2) A subsequent patent cannot be exploited without a licence from a prior patent held by another person and the subsequent patent is considered to represent an important technical advance that has considerable economic significance. (3) A holder of a plant variety who can neither acquire a breeder’s right to that variety nor exploit that variety without a licence from a prior patent holder can obtain a compulsory licence given that the relevant plant variety involves a technically important advance and leads to considerable financial benefit in comparison to the invention in the patent. (4) In the case of important public interest. (5) For a party to continue to commercially exploit the invention if that party was exploiting at the time when a patent application was made available to the public, given that very special circumstances make it desirable and that the party had no knowledge and could not reasonably have obtained any knowledge of the pending application. This can also be applied to a person who was not already exploiting but had made substantial preparations for commercial exploitation. (6) There is a special authorisation to grant a compulsory licence for medicine intended for export to developing countries and countries struggling with a severe public health problem in accordance with the decision of the WTO's General Council of 30 August 2003 on the TRIPS Agreement and public health More information can be found [here](https://e-courses.epo.org/wbts_int/CompulsoryLicensing/CL_IS.pdf).