Global Patent Trends Unpacked: 2025 IP Index Findings

In today’s global innovation economy, patents are the lifeblood of progress. They safeguard inventions, ensure groundbreaking ideas receive the protection they need to thrive and transform industries, and save millions of lives through access to innovative medicines and treatments.

The U.S. Chamber’s 2025 International IP Index benchmarks the IP framework of 55 global economies across 53 unique indicators, including patent protection and enforcement, highlighting the good, the bad, and the worst when it comes to supporting robust IP in the globalized world.

Here’s where the global patent landscape stood in 2024.

The good:

• Brazil’s INPI joined the Global Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), streamlining patent examination and improving grant timelines.
• The Dominican Republic signed an Accelerated Patent Grant Agreement with the USPTO, allowing U.S. patent holders to obtain corresponding patents without substantive examination.

The bad:

• China released updated Patent Examination Guidelines that make patent term restoration for biopharmaceuticals contingent on first global launch happening domestically.

• In the United States, ongoing drug price negotiations and march-in rights proposals weaken the framework for American life sciences innovation.

• Taiwan’s Food and Drug Authority (TFDA) has interpreted “new” medicines narrowly, excluding dosage or strength changes from linkage protections. This interpretation was upheld by the Supreme Administrative Court in 2023–2024.

The worst:  

• In Colombia, the Government granted a CL for an HIV/AIDS treatment.

• Indonesia’s 2024 draft patent law amendments would allow the government to bypass standard procedures and issue CLs if a patent is deemed to cause “monopolistic practices,” effectively threatening to nullify all granted patent rights under a broad and ambiguous standard.
• The European Union’s proposed General Pharmaceutical Legislation and Patent Package weakens the EU’s IP framework by reducing exclusivity protection for biopharmaceutical innovators.

Why it matters: These developments are essential in showing how economies either embrace or undermine the innovation ecosystem that patents enable. As the Index illustrates, stable, predictable IP protections are critical to attracting investment and ensuring access to life-saving medicines. When countries weaken patent rights through compulsory licenses or vague enforcement, they not only deter innovation but also risk isolating themselves from the global knowledge economy.

About the author

Ryan Denson

Ryan Denson is Manager for International IP for the Global Innovation Policy Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.