Since the late 1980s the global intellectual property rights (IPR) system has been strengthening dramatically as much of the developing world introduces patent protection for new drug products. This may lead to more research on drugs to address developing country needs. As there are identifiable...

This paper examines several recent avenues of empirical research into the enforcement of" intellectual property rights. To frame these issues, we start with a stylized model of the patent" litigation process. The bulk of the paper is devoted to linking the empirical literature on patent"...

Patent counts are very imperfect measures of innovative output. This paper discusses how additional data-the number of years a patent is renewed and the number of countries in which protection for the same invention is sought - can be used to improve on counts in studies which require a measure...

The decision to require that countries grant product patents for pharmaceutical innovations as a condition of membership in the World Trade Organization was very contentious. Almost 50 developing countries were not granting patent monopolies for drugs during the period the Uruguay round of GATT...

This paper investigates the characteristics of litigated patents by combining for the first" time information about patent case filings from the U.S. district courts and detailed data from the" U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We construct a series of indicators for the factors which the"...

This paper examines the suggestion that established plaintiffs request preliminary injunctions to engage in predation against less financially healthy firms. We first present a model in which differences in litigation costs drive the use of preliminary injunctions in civil litigation. The...