US Highest, India Lowest On US Chamber International IP Index

The United States Chamber of Commerce Global Intellectual Property Center this week released a report ranking 25 countries on their IP environment.

The role of this centre is to “champion intellectual property (IP) rights as vital to creating jobs, saving lives, advancing global economic growth, and generating breakthrough solutions to global challenges,” according to a press release. The press release available here.

The report is available here [pdf].

The United States scored highest, with David Hirschmann, president and CEO of the GIPC, calling for even greater enforcement of rights in the US.

India scored lowest of the 25 countries. Some of its “key areas of weakness” included “patentability requirements in violation of TRIPS” and “use of compulsory licensing for commercial and non-emergency situations.” TRIPS is the 1994 World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

So far, no government has challenged India’s compliance with TRIPS. The Chamber has had a campaign on India’s use of IP.

Sources for the report include government and legal sources, from international institutions and third parties, academic journals and news. “All sources used are publicly available, freely available, and accessible to all,” it said.

South Africa obtained the highest score among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group. However, the report showed concerns for the patent reforms being discussed by the South African government.

“Early iterations of this reform package are not encouraging for rights holders as they include a more expansive use of compulsory licensing and the introduction of pharmaceutical patentability requirements in the style of Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Act,” the report said. Section 3(d) covers post-grant opposition.

It adds: “countries like Canada, Brazil, and South Africa for example, continue to avoid opportunities to promote and protect IP – to their detriment.”

The report also brought up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), concluding that “successful implementation of the TPP could lead to improvements of the GIPC Index score of many of the TPP signatories included in this Index.”

TPP, said Hirschmann, “has the ability to set the gold standard in the Pacific region, and for the world, on protecting and enforcing IP.”

Julia Fraser is an intern at Intellectual Property Watch. She is currently training to be a solicitor and will start work at an international law firm in London in 2015. She has a BSc Honours in Biology from Edinburgh University where she developed an interest in public health related intellectual property issues.