India has enormous potential for drug development if its legal system will respect intellectual property.

Recent court decisions in India endanger drug investment.

Indian bureaucrats and politicians must overcome short-term thinking and improve India's IP systems by ensuring that deserving products receive patents and making sure trademarks are enforced. Only then will India develop a true innovation economy.

India is on the brink of finalizing a free trade agreement with the European Union. Yet even as the deal gets close, one area remains hotly contested: protection for intellectual property (IP). Controversy mounts over "data exclusivity" for pharmaceuticals.

India has a choice: itcan either follow the route it has taken in software engineering or it can travel the opposite route with idiosyncratic rules that limit growth and innovation.

Today, nearly 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients originate outside the United States. But the FDA cannot adequately oversee the safety of chemicals manufactured overseas and imported into the United States.

India is at a crossroads: it can protectintellectual property orlimit growth and innovation.