The conclusion of the Trade Related Aspects Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS), in the context of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations (1994,) ushered in an unprecedented interest in the protection of intellectual property (IP) particularly concerning the impact of new global IP rules on developing countries. However, developments relating to protection of IP in Arab countries have, in ...

Under the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights, the World Trade Organization members are required to enforce product patents for pharmaceuticals. In this paper we empirically investigate the welfare effects of this requirement on developing countries using data for the fluoroquinolones subsegment of the systemic anti-bacterials segment of the Indian pharmaceuticals market. Ou...

The signing of the TRIPS agreement in 1994 heralded the world-wide enforcement of the type of intellectual property rights regime that had been established in the most developed countries. The arrival of this type of regime, which provides enlarged and powerful protection to patent-holders, coincided with the global development of the AIDS epidemic. This generated a series of new problems, part...

The impact of patent protection on biomedical innovation has been a controversial issue. Although a ‘medical anti-commons’ has been predicted as a result of a proliferation of patents on upstream technologies, evidence to test these concerns is only now emerging. However, most industrial surveys that shed light on this issue are mainly from developed countries, making it very difficult to predi...

One-third of the world’s population lacks access to the most basic essential drugs. For the destitute sick in the developing world, the price of medicines can determine whether they will be treated. Patents drive drug prices up, the resultant monopoly status allowing the producer to charge whatever price the market will bear. The World Trade OrganizationTradeRelated Aspects of Intellectual Prop...

This article investigates the implications of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which reached full-fledged implementation in 2005, for the patenting activity of Indian biopharmaceutical companies. The Indian biopharmaceutical industry is well-known for its generic producers, whose business models capitalize on the opportunity to reverse-engineer pat...

We examine the effect of pharmaceutical patent protection on the speed of drug launch, price, and quantity in 60 countries from 2000-2013. The World Trade Organization required its member countries to implement a minimum level of patent protection within a specified time period as part of the TRIPS Agreement. However, members retained the right to impose price controls and to issue compulsory l...

The concept of pharmaceutical data exclusivity protection comes from the West. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) establishes the basic rules for pharmaceutical data exclusivity protection. People's Republic of China's domestic law is consistent with the TRIPS agreement. In the drug registration approval process of the People's Republic of China's Dru...