One of the perennial difficulties that authors, publishers and users are faced with in the legal publication market is the problem of dated information. In the field of EC and United Kingdom competition law this difficulty is particularly pronounced. The constant stream of merger decisions, exemptions, clearances, regulations, statutory instruments, notices and other measures of new law and lore requires that every anti-trust practitioner must expend a considerable amount of time and energy even to stay abreast of developments if he or she is to provide effective and expert advice. Competition law texts therefore will always be, to a certain extent, pictures in time. Accordingly any work that attempts to grapple with this problem is to be welcomed and it is for this reason, in particular, that I was pleased to see the much-heralded publication of Butterworths’ Competition Law.

Butterworths’ Competition Law has been published in looseleaf format and with a commitment, so far fulfilled, to produce regular updates throughout the year. Originally three updates were to be issued each year, but it is understood that in the near future the publishers will be issuing updates six times a year. Nonetheless, it is a costly addition to any practitioner’s library costing an initial £595 with the updates costing approximately £250 a year dependent on length and frequency. Many practitioners may feel that such sums are justified only if the work becomes the standard reference work, the “one-stop shop”, for EEC and U.K. competition law. At this stage it is too early to judge whether the editors will achieve that objective. One important factor will be whether the editors succeed in reconciling differences in style and treatment, and achieving uniformly high quality. This will be a special challenge in the case of Butterworths’ Competition Law, which has no less than 21 listed contributing editors in addition to Peter Freeman and Richard Whish as general editors and Jeremy Lever, Q.C., as consulting editor. Now that much of the substantive work has been produced, the task of the general editors will be to achieve consistency of treatment.

Butterworths’ Competition Law is made up of three volumes. Volumes 1 and 2 are divided into 12 separate sections: EC and U.K. Competition Law (Principles); Horizontal Agreements (Prohibited); Horizontal Agreements (Permitted); Distribution; Licensing; Dominant Firms and Monopolists; Merger Control; State Aids; Special Sectors; Enforcement—Regulatory Authorities; Enforcement—National Courts; and Extra-territoriality. The final volume contains EC and U.K. legislation and other supporting materials. The wisdom of including Volume 3 in the set must be questioned given the inevitable effect it must have had on the overall price of the text. As others have already noted, the material contained in the third volume is readily obtainable elsewhere and anti-trust practitioners are unlikely to consult Volume 3 with any degree of regularity. Perhaps Volume 3 might have been made an optional extra. However, given the pace of change, particularly in the competition law of the European Communities, there is much to be said for a looseleaf compendium of legislation which can be kept up to date with regular supplements. In this respect Volume 3 achieves something the Butterworths’ Competition Law Handbook cannot achieve.

The reviewer has had occasion to consult the sections in Volumes 1 and 2 dealing with intellectual property licensing, dominance and horizontal agreements. The coverage is comprehensive and comprehensible. In particular, the consideration of the patent and know-how block exemptions and the inter-relationship between the two and the usefulness of one vis-à-