This led to two significant developments. First, the government decided in 1998 to accede to the Paris Convention. This largely constituted a political move to reaffirm India's commitment to the international IPR regime and to enhance India's image towards foreign investors. This is due to the fact that by joining the Paris Union after having ratified the TRIPS Agreement, India did not take on added international commitments. Secondly, in view of the April 1999 deadline, the government tried again in December 1998 to submit an amendment to the Patents Act 1970 modeled after the failed 1994 amendment. Following its failure to see the amendment through by the end of the winter session of Parliament, the government promulgated in January 1999 another temporary Ordinance. Finally, hardly less than a month before the 19 April 1999 deadline for compliance with the WTO decision, both houses of Parliament adopted the amendments necessary to put India in compliance with its TRIPS obligations.

The Patents (Amendment) Act 1999 introduced two main changes to the Act. First, it introduced a new sub-section to section 5 prohibiting product patents on medicines or drugs. The new clause left the prohibition untouched but permitted the filing of a patent claim. Secondly, patent applications for food or health related products had to be dealt with according to a new Chapter IV A, which set out the specific conditions under which this was to take place and provided for the grant of exclusive marketing rights as called for the TRIPS Agreement [see Patents (Amendment) Act 1999].

While the adoption of the 1999 amendments proved to be a lengthy process, it constituted only a tiny part of the overall changes that had to be put in place for TRIPS compliance. Since India had to comply with most of its other obligations by 1 January 2000, this led to the introduction of another proposed set of amendments in December 1999 (Ibid.). These amendments were referred to a Parliamentary committee that studied the proposed changes for the period, 1999-2002. Eventually, the amendments proposed by the government in 1999 were adopted without major changes in 2002.