This decline seems paradoxical for three main reasons. First, since the 1980s and, particularly as the implementation of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) was completed in developed and developing countries , patent protection allowed companies to increase income generation worldwide through the exercise of stronger and, in some cases, longer patent rights and data exclusivity . Second, there is a new set of scientific and technological tools – such a genomics, proteomics, combinatorial chemistry — that offer the potential of speeding up drug discovery.