Measuring the Implementation of Intellectual Property Rights in India

This paper develops a novel de facto intellectual property rights (IPRs) Implementation Index, which measures the strength of IPRs based on the actual implementation of IP rights in India, over the period 1970–2020. Our index improves upon existing measures, including those by Rapp and Rozek (1990), Sherwood (1997), Ostergard (2000), Ginarte and Park (1997, 2008), and the World Economic Forum. Unlike some earlier indices which omit the enforcement dimension, or which capture only de jure provisions on the statutes, the IPRs Implementation Index that we propose explicitly incorporates the practical enforcement of IPRs. The index focuses on the actual implementation of legal provisions via judicial outcomes. Its construction is based on the analysis of 414 fully disposed IP infringement cases heard in Indian district and high courts, compiled from reliable judicial data sources, namely Indian Kanoon and E-Courts. Court behavior is evaluated against key provisions of the Indian Patents Act 1970 (2005), including preliminary injunctions, burden of proof reversal, case duration, and additional entitlements such as Anton Piller orders as well as cost awards. From these case-level indicators, three sub-indices are first developed for patents, copyrights, and trademarks, and then these are aggregated using alternative schemes such as equal weights, principal component analysis, and factor analysis. The final index ranges from 0 (weak implementation) to 1 (strong implementation). Using the aggregate index based on ‘equal weights’ for illustration, results show that India’s IPRs implementation improved steadily over the study period, with the index rising from 0.06 in 1970 to 0.53 in 2020, indicating a clear transition from ‘weak’ to ‘moderate’ implementation. These trends reflect not only the legal IP reforms in India, but also reflect their execution in reality. Analysis of sub-index dynamics shows that while all three components (i.e., patents implementation index, copyrights implementation index, and trademarks implementation index) co-move strongly with the final IPR index (correlations > 0.80). However, their contribution to final index’s variation is not uniform i.e., according to principal component analysis and factor analysis, weights of the sub-indices are near-balanced (30% to 38% approximately), with copyrights slightly stronger structurally, yet standardized OLS decomposition reveals a different pattern. Trademarks account for the largest unique share of variation (˜42%), followed closely by patents (˜39%), whereas copyrights contribute only ˜19%. This indicates that the overall index is jointly driven, but predominantly shaped by the influence of trademark and patent components. Comparison with the Ginarte and Park (1997) patent rights index for India reveals notable divergence in both interpretation and measured strength. The GP index appears to understate India’s IPR protection levels prior to 1999, while overstating them post-2000. Consequently, our IPRI index indicates relatively weaker post-2000 enforcement, even in the TRIPS era, than what is suggested by the GP index. Overall, the IPRI index presents a more calibrated and less biased representation of India’s IPR enforcement trajectory.