Compulsory licensing is a core issue of the ongoing debate about the tension between intellectual property rights and antitrust law. In order to promote subsequent and derived innovations, antitrust law faces the challenge to determine conditions under which the exercise of an intellectual property right by refusing to license constitutes an abuse and the owner can be ordered to grant a compulsory license to competitors. Against the background of the ongoing debate on the more economic approach, the thesis follows an interdisciplinary approach and an comparative examination of the conditions for compulsory licensing in antitrust law. First, the thesis discusses competition policy principles as well as possibilities and limits of the more economic approach in the European abuse control. Second, using economic approaches and findings, the thesis develops criteria, on which basis it finally analyses and evaluates the practice on compulsory licenses in the EU, Germany and the US.