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The Impact of Higher Standards in Patent Protection for Pharmaceutical Industries under the TRIPS Agreement – A Comparative Study of China and India
Author(s) -
Li Xuan
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
world economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.594
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1467-9701
pISSN - 0378-5920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9701.2008.01133.x
Subject(s) - china , trips agreement , trips architecture , economics , investment (military) , international trade , comparative advantage , intellectual property , patent law , business , international economics , developing country , law , economic growth , engineering , political science , politics , transport engineering
A comparative study is undertaken that explores Chinese and Indian pharmaceutical industries under different patent regimes. It is found that relative to India, which had implemented process patent protection until 2005, China with a product patent regime since 1993 suffers from both lower drug accessibility and availability (the latter is a missing parameter in the literature). Also, China lags behind in both lower R&D investment and patents filed by Chinese nationals. Based on these findings and associated legal interpretation, we conclude that higher patent protection in China generates negative impacts on the pharmaceutical industries. Thus, governments should utilise TRIPS flexibilities and other regimes such as price control to offset the anticompetitive effect in designing patent policies.