Pharmaceutical patent examination outcomes in the Dominican Republic

Luis Gil Abinader ()
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Luis Gil Abinader: University of Buenos Aires

Journal of International Business Policy, 2020, vol. 3, issue 4, No 5, 385-407

Abstract: Abstract In the Dominican Republic, the legal provisions requiring the substantive examination of patent applications were enacted 20 years ago, along with the implementation of the TRIPS agreement. Prior to this, the country had a registration system in which all applications that were filed ended up being registered. This offers an opportunity to explore the outcomes of applications in a country that embarked on substantive patent examinations relatively recently. and which has drawn comparatively less attention in academic research related to the rigorousness of patentability criteria. Based on a novel dataset of pharmaceutical patent applications filed in the Dominican Republic between 2000 and 2015, I find that only 16% of them were granted. This seems surprisingly low. However, I also find that grant rates may be influenced by several factors, including some that are not strictly related to patent examination. In particular, some applications may have been disposed of without a grant because their applicants acquired additional knowledge, indicating that the underlying inventions lacked commercial value. This calls for more attention towards other policies – such as legal provisions and institutional arrangements designed to accelerate the speed of patent examination – which could also be determinants of grant rates.

Keywords: TRIPS agreement; pharmaceuticals; secondary patents; grant rates; patent offices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1057/s42214-020-00070-w

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