The TRIPS Agreement obligated India to amend its patent laws to meet the minimum standard of patent protection and patentability. In 2005, India amended its Patent Act to comply with TRIPS, which resulted in the removal of several provisions that facilitated the production and importation of...

The WTO is the most important international organization that governs world trade. Decisions are made by the member countries. The WTO has 164 members and 24 observer governments (most of which have applied for membership), and members represent over 98% of world trade. The highest-level...

Innumerable inventions implicate public health—including drugs, vaccines, dietary supplements, and sewage treatment plants. Over the past century, the Patent Office and the courts have modulated the ability to obtain or enforce patents for these inventions—whether in response to a public...

This paper provides a first comprehensive quantitative analysis of optimal patent policy in the global economy. We introduce a new framework, which combines trade and growth theory into a tractable tool for quantitative research. Our application delivers three main results. First, the potential...