Indian stand on intellectual property rights vindicated

Friday, 13 September 2002, 19:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
LONDON: India's stand on intellectual property (IP) rights has been vindicated by a new report that says patent applicants should reveal the geographic source of the genetic material for their invention. The 180-page report by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights was presented to the British government Thursday. In the fields of medicines and plants and knowledge the commission makes key recommendations that vindicate India's stand on issues such as neem and basmati rice patents. "Patent applicants should be required to disclose the geographic source of the genetic material from which their 'invention' is derived," the report says. In this way, "developing countries can be informed of proposed patents that incorporate their resources and take action if their rights have been overlooked". The commission report urges other reforms to make it harder for commercial interests to claim rights on what is already known in developing countries, such as knowledge of the medicinal value of a native plant. According to patent law, intellectual property rights cannot be claimed on "prior art" knowledge already in the public domain. But some countries, the U.S. for instance, do not recognise such knowledge when it comes from outside their own borders. Therefore, the report recommends a broader definition of prior art. It endorses the cataloguing of traditional knowledge "with appropriate consent of holders of the knowledge." Examiners who weigh the validity of patent applications could then check claims of "invention" against existing traditional knowledge. The commission was set up by Britain on the recommendation in a policy paper on globalisation and development in 2000. Its members were drawn from both developed and developing countries with expertise in science, law, ethics and economics and includes Ramesh Mashelkar, director-general of India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and secretary to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. "India has been working with other countries to catalogue traditional knowledge, particularly following our experience with invalid patent claims on turmeric and basmati," said Mashelkar. The report also contains recommendations in line with India's position on making medicines available at affordable cost in developing countries. The commission agrees that without the incentive of patents, it is doubtful the private sector would have invested so much in the discovery and development of medicines, many of which benefit both developed and developing countries. But the report finds the IP system "hardly plays any role in stimulating research on diseases particularly prevalent in developing countries" unless there is also a substantial market in the developed world. As IP rights are strengthened globally, the overall cost of medicines in developing countries is likely to increase unless steps are taken to counteract this trend, the report said, suggesting that developed and developing countries adopt a range of policies to improve access to medicines. The report recommends use of differential pricing, which would allow prices for drugs to be lower in developing countries, while higher prices are maintained in developed countries. If this is to work, the report said, "It is necessary to stop low priced drugs leaking back to developed countries." Developing countries should also aim to facilitate in their legal systems the ability to import patented medicines if they can get them cheaper elsewhere in the world. Developing countries should also make provisions in their law that will facilitate entry of generic competitors as soon as the patent has expired on a particular drug, says the report. "Developed countries often proceed on the assumption that what is good for them is likely to be good for developing countries," said John Barton, commission chair and law professor at Stanford University. "But, in the case of developing countries, more and stronger protection is not necessarily better." The commission concludes the IP rights system, as a whole is less advantageous for developing than for developed countries in many areas of importance to development, such as health, agriculture, education and IT. Developing countries participate in global IP systems as "second comers" in a world that has been shaped by "first comers", said Barton. "They are now being urged to adopt a complex set of rules more suited to advanced economies. "When their economies were at comparable stages of maturity, most developed countries did not follow the stringent intellectual property standards they now advocate for developing countries."
Source: IANS