India to sign pact against patent arm-twisting
India’s move to short-circuit the developed countries’ agenda to spin patent laws in poor nations in their favour seems to be yielding results.
By Gireesh Chandra Prasad, TNN |
NEW DELHI: Without conceding to the West���s demand for raising patent laws to US standards, India can now look forward to protecting its traditional knowledge against exploitation by innovators in developed nations.
The effort comes at a time when pharmaceutical MNCs are looking at biological resources and traditional knowledge to replenish their research pipeline.
In the absence of a globally binding framework to protect traditional knowledge, the Indian strategy is to help various governments to turn down patent applications by proving that the claimed ���innovation��� is nothing new.
The move is to get global patent offices in the US, the EU and Japan to accept India���s documented traditional knowledge as a non-patentable domain called ���prior art���.
���We are getting positive responses to our proposal and plan to ink the first agreement with one of them shortly,��� said a source. It is learnt that the law ministry is now vetting the draft for a pact with the European Patent Office.
This means that drug makers won���t get patents in the 30-nation trading block if the underlying knowledge is documented in India. In a limited way, this defeats the US���s bargain for upward harmonisation of patent laws in return for protecting centuries old knowledge in developing countries.
The effort comes at a time when pharmaceutical MNCs are looking at biological resources and traditional knowledge to replenish their research pipeline.
In the absence of a globally binding framework to protect traditional knowledge, the Indian strategy is to help various governments to turn down patent applications by proving that the claimed ���innovation��� is nothing new.
The move is to get global patent offices in the US, the EU and Japan to accept India���s documented traditional knowledge as a non-patentable domain called ���prior art���.
���We are getting positive responses to our proposal and plan to ink the first agreement with one of them shortly,��� said a source. It is learnt that the law ministry is now vetting the draft for a pact with the European Patent Office.
This means that drug makers won���t get patents in the 30-nation trading block if the underlying knowledge is documented in India. In a limited way, this defeats the US���s bargain for upward harmonisation of patent laws in return for protecting centuries old knowledge in developing countries.
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India would also pursue similar deals with 11 international patent search agencies.
Targeting the global patent search mechanisms to prove that the claimed innovation was actually public knowledge for centuries is a low cost strategy, as an international consensus on greater disclosure of biological origin and benefit sharing is only a distant possibility.
While developing nations have incorporated disclosure norms in their patent laws, the US and Japan outrightly reject any such suggestion. The EU agrees on greater disclosure, but does not favour patent applicants attaching evidence to show that the traditional knowledge holder is aware of the application and has agreed to a benefit sharing deal.
The US patent office is said to issue 200 patents of biological origin every year. Litigation to invalidate one such patent would cost half a million dollars and at least three years, with no certainty of the outcome.
An agreement with the US PTO will prove to be a low cost solution to protect India���s interest. Experts say that a quarter of all drug patents issued in the US are of plant origin.
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This ���defensive protection of traditional knowledge and genetic resources���, is part of the government���s larger gameplan which also involves developing modern medicines from traditional knowledge.The digital database which the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR) and the Department of Ayush have developed, will help researchers identify the common plant parts and the active ingredients used in Ayurveda, Sidha and Unani medicines for curing the same disease.
Such easy identification of the lead for drug development will reduce costs from $1.5bn to just $0.2m besides reducing lab research time from 12 years to just three to four years.
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