Source: 1. Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (2002)

2. Science & Technology, Data Book, Government of India, Ministry of Science and Technology, Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi (March 2004)

Table 1 indicates that the number of patents filed by foreign inventors is much higher than that by Indian inventors, which implies that more and more foreign direct investment is coming into play in the fields of R&D in India. This may ultimately not only result in declining public investment in R&D in India but also weakening the domestic economy, as a whole. Though the TRIPS Agreement provides a set of minimum standards for patentability below which the member states of the WTO cannot go, this limits, for instance, the opportunities that countries previously had to restrict patentability in certain specific fields such as health and food.