The Impacts of Intellectual‐Property Related Preferential Trade Agreements on Bilateral Patent Applications

Jacob Howard, Keith E. Maskus and William Ridley

Review of International Economics, 2025, vol. 33, issue 2, 466-485

Abstract: Intellectual property rights (IPRs) are a central emphasis in the negotiation of “deep” preferential trade agreements (PTAs) containing provisions on domestic regulatory policy. These provisions require member countries to adopt IPRs standards going beyond the baseline requirements of the World Trade Organization's TRIPS agreement. We use a structural gravity framework to study the effects of membership in such PTAs on bilateral international patenting, considering both within‐agreement applications and registrations between members and non‐members. We explore the heterogeneity of these effects arising from various attributes of different agreements. Our findings suggest that strong and enforceable IPRs standards in PTAs generate positive impacts on international patenting, albeit with significant disparities across agreement types. Agreements with multiple TRIPS‐Plus norms increase patenting among members compared with patenting from outside those areas, while other types encourage more patenting from non‐members.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12783

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:reviec:v:33:y:2025:i:2:p:466-485

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0965-7576

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi

More articles in Review of International Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().