Are the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights the Way for Development? A Precedence Investigation between Human Development Index and Index of Patent Rights

The main question, which leads this analysis, interrogates the existence of a causality relation between the human development index and Index of Patent Rights. It was decided to use a database whereas all units of the cross section have the same periods of time for human development index and Index of Patent Rights. This database covers 84 countries with the two indicators between 1975 and 2005. By the use of the Granger test, it was found that Index of Patent Rights does not temporally precede human development index, which indicates the veracity and, consequently, the corroboration of the idea of Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights should represent the interests of the richer countries’ great corporations, and not the underdeveloped nations, as said in the statement of World Trade Organization.