A cross-country index of intellectual property rights in pharmaceutical inventions

Building on the seminal work of Ginarte and Park (1997. Research Policy. 26, 283–301), we develop an index of property rights in pharmaceutical inventions, the Pharmaceutical Intellectual Property Protection (PIPP) Index, for 154 countries spanning 1960 to 2005. It incorporates five types of property rights in pharmaceuticals; six statutory measures of enforcement; and adherence to three international agreements providing for the grant and enforcement of rights to foreigners. For both developed and developed countries, the PIPP Index starts at low levels in 1960, increases slowly through the early 1990s, and then sharply increases due to minimum standards set by the 1995 TRIPS Agreement.