[Commons-Law] relay

Via: "Pranesh Prakash"

Via: "Prashant Iyengar"

http://www.financialexpress.com/printer/news/266520/

XLRI, NIF sign MoU to create research council
State Bureau
Posted online: Tuesday , January 29, 2008 at 0045 hrs

Jamshedpur, Jan 28B-School XLRI has entered into a memorandum of
understanding (MoU) with the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) for
creation of a research advisory council (RAC). The council will assess
different innovations sourced by the NIF from Jharkhand, Bihar, part
of West Bengal, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

The innovations will be sourced from the NIF's national register for
grassroots innovations. The selected ones will be supported through
nomination to the biennial national innovation award, refining the
product, protection of intellectual property rights associated with it
and offering risk capital investment by NIF's micro venture fund for
setting up enterprises.

According to the MoU signed here on Sunday by NIF national coordinator
(business development & micro venture) L Chinzah and XLRI director
Father E Abraham, the RAC will comprise professors from the B-School,
industry experts and NIF members.

The XLRI's student body, Social Initiative Group for Managerial
Assistance , will also be involved in mentoring and monitoring those
projects. The Sigma will also assist in market benchmarking
innovations and developing business plans.

The NIF plans to provide institutional support in scouting, spawning,
sustaining and scaling up grassroots innovations and help them grow
into self-supporting ventures. Its 'Honey Bee' database of around
10,000 innovations collected and documented by Sristi is part of the
national register of innovation managed and supported by the NIF.

According to Chinzah, the NIF was looking forward for support from the
Sigma and Face for "adding value to" the innovations it came across in
the eastern region during scouting works.

"As the NIF cann't do much on its own following the networking
philosophy, we are trying to build capacities here so that existing
institutions like XLRI can be brought to the platform to add value to
such innovations," said Chinzah.

Speaking on the occasion, the XLRI director said the Sigma and faculty
supported initiative would be of much use to the B-School as "our
students need to go out to villages and see what the real world looks
like".

Via: "Prashant Iyengar"

http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c.php?leftnm=10&autono=311957

IITs to invest Rs 1,500cr for virtual varsity
Kalpana Pathak / Mumbai January 29, 2008
To be modelled on the Carnegie Mellon University.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are in talks with US-based
Carnegie Mellon University to set up a Virtual IIT.

To be set up at a cost of over Rs 1,500 crore over the next three to
four years, it will enable aspiring IITians and engineering students
who could not make it to the premier engineering institutes of
technology to bag an IIT-equivalent degree online.

Currently, a four-year BTech (IIT) tuition fee is around Rs 27,000 per
year while that of a two-year MTech (IIT) is around Rs 5,000 per year.
The Virtual IIT, on the other hand, will be online, and therefore
cheaper. Details on charges for an online degree, forms submission,
evaluation and exams are being worked out.

The IITs will study the Carnegie Mellon University's distance learning
programme — Open Learning Initiative started in 2002 — which is
considered one of the most successful so far.

"We are studying the models of western universities as we plan to have
a full-fledged online degree-granting programme. A large number of
private institutions do not have good teachers. We want to provide an
online programme in which not only students but also professional
engineers and faculty can benefit from the engineering courses
delivered by IITs," said an IIT director.

The IITs plan to shortlist around 50 national-level engineering
colleges to set up well-equipped laboratories where students taking
online courses could go for practical sessions.

The IITs have already discussed this idea with some leading Indian IT
companies that are willing to support this initiative.

To begin with, the online National Programme on Technology Enhanced
Learning (NPTEL) course content that the IITs deliver currently on the
website http://nptel.iitm.ac.in could become the base for Virtual IIT.

The IITs also plan to make the courses available on Google and You
Tube. An online evaluation process could also be devised followed by
certification for Virtual IIT courses.

NPTEL has registered about 770,000 visits since September 2006 and in
a survey conducted by IIT Madras lasting eight to ten months when the
IITs had login/register utility, about 180,000 accessed it more than a
few times, 50 per cent of whom are employed after a degree, 40 per
cent students and about 10 per cent teachers.

Access by users in India is predominant (90 per cent), followed by
those in the US, Canada, the UK, West and South Asia (8 per cent) and
the rest scattered over 130 countries.

Via: "Prashant Iyengar"

http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c.php?leftnm=10&autono=311950

French plan e-mail warnings for illegal downloads
Ben Fenton / Cannes January 29, 2008
Legislation allowing the French government to send e-mail warnings to
anyone downloading music tracks without paying for them should be
passed by the summer, a senior official said on Sunday.

Illegal downloading in France had reached such a point, said Jean
Berbinau, general secretary of Armt, the regulatory authority for
digital copyright, that the authorities had to act.

"We have to do something, but it is only transitional, only to give
time to the industry to adapt and maybe to encourage a new business
model," said Berbinau at the Midem international music market.

He is charged with implementing the measures announced last year by
French President Nicolas Sarkozy. They include a
"three-strikes-and-you're-out" policy for people downloading
illegally.

After two warnings, another breach would mean Internet service
providers would have to block a person's web access.

The e-mail warnings, which would tell people they had been caught
breaking copyright laws, would not only be sent to those involved in
large-scale file-sharing, he said.

"They would be sent to each IP [Internet protocol] address. It is not
a huge technical challenge."

Berbinau did not agree with Professor Lawrence Lessig, who urged
delegates to Midem to realise that criminalising young music fans was
not the way to cope with the problems.

"I don't think it is possible for society to have laws and then to
tolerate a universal breach of them," he added.

Via: "Prashant Iyengar"

http://www.financialexpress.com/printer/news/266297/

The bitterest pill

Posted online: Monday , January 28, 2008 at 2212 hrs

"If we have the feeling that something is rotten in the state, then
let's take the opportunity to find out." So said Neelie Kroes, the
European Commission's competition commissioner, seeking to justify a
spectacular raid recently on big pharmaceutical companies. Officials
are investigating whether sellers of expensive branded pills conspired
together to delay the launch of cheap generic rivals. America's
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is also looking into it.

Many of Big Pharma's biggest blockbusters will soon lose their patent
protection. Deloitte, a consultancy, estimates that $55 billion of
products will go off patent in 2009 and will then face competition. At
the same time, pharma bosses are being asked to defend patents in
costly legal battles against an increasingly confident and litigious
generics industry. As generics firms evolve from mere copycats into
innovators in their own right, many such firms—led by Israel's Teva,
India's Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy's Laboratories—are vigorously challenging
patents.

The best way out for the established drugs industry would be to find
lots of clever new blockbusters to replace the ones going off-patent.
But as the industry's sagging share valuations suggest, the new-drugs
pipelines at big firms have run dry. So their managers are relying on
two controversial new strategies. First, they are settling the
lawsuits brought by generics firms, sometimes paying them to delay
launching cheap pills. Novartis, a big Swiss firm, recently made a
private settlement for Dr Reddy's to drop a lawsuit in return for the
Indian firm delaying the launch of a generic rival to

Exelon, its Alzheimer's remedy. This month it emerged that
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a big British pharmaceutical firm, has also
settled a patent lawsuit with Ranbaxy concerning the generics firm's
launch of a cheap version of Imitrex, GSK's migraine reliever.

Under American laws designed to encourage generic drugs, which save
money for patients, the first generic maker to win regulatory approval
for its version of any given branded drug is supposed to enjoy a
six-month monopoly. This promised pot of gold was designed to support
small generics firms—but Big Pharma has found a loophole. It is
pre-emptively launching generic versions of its own branded pills,
which wipes out those six months of monopoly profits and undermines
the economics of generics firms.

Merck, a big American pharmaceuticals firm, is soon expected to launch
an authorised generic version of Fosamax, an osteoporosis drug that is
due to lose patent protection in February. A recent survey of global
branded-drugs firms by Cutting Edge Information, a consultancy, found
that a third of them had launched authorised generics between 2005 and
2007—and the number will grow to 44% between 2008 and 2010. Pfizer has
set up an in-house division to handle such generics.

The recent steps taken by regulators in America and Europe to
investigate Big Pharma looks like good news for generics firms—unless,
that is, some of them turn out to have been complicit in the alleged
dirty tricks. Earlier this month, America's FTC extended its probe to
include generics companies. And during last week's raid by European
investigators, one of the firms targeted was Teva, a generics pioneer.
The generics industry is defiant, arguing that it remains the
consumer's best friend despite its settlements with the enemy.
Kathleen Jaeger, head of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association,
insists that officials must avoid taking action that "sweeps the bad
settlements in with the good settlements". It remains to be seen
whether the upstart pillmakers have been playing for time or selling
out.

—(c) The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008

Via: "Prashant Iyengar"

Leading drug firms raided in EU probe
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c.php?leftnm=10&autono=311001

Andrew Jack / London January 18, 2008
European regulators raided some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical
companies on Wednesday in an inquiry into whether they conspired to
keep up the price of drugs after patents expired.

Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Sanofi-Aventis were among
those that confirmed they had been visited as part of a European
Commission-led probe into delays in the launch of low-cost generic
drugs. Teva, the world's biggest generics company, was also targeted.

The inquiry will focus on whether the industry has abused patent
rights to delay the introduction of low-cost generic alternatives. It
will assess whether companies have made spurious attempts to extend
the life of intellectual property rights or cut deals with one generic
rival to the exclusion of others.

The EU is increasingly concerned about the rising cost of medicines
and declining innovation. Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner,
said: "If we have the feeling that something is rotten in the state,
then let's take the opportunity to find out." The raids, which began
on Tuesday, broke with Commission practice in that no advance notice
was given. Previous sectoral inquiries were launched with
questionnaires sent to companies. "It's certainly novel and rather
aggressive. Dawn raids presuppose that the Commission has got a whiff
of something they want to investigate," said a Brussels-based lawyer
specialising in competition issues. Europeans spent ¤200 billion a
year on pharmaceuticals, or ¤400 each, Kroes said.

"If innovative products are not being produced, and cheaper generic
alternatives to existing products are in some cases being delayed,
then we need to find out why and, if necessary, take action," she
added.

The Commission stressed that its visits were the starting point for a
broad inquiry, rather than a response to "positive indications of
wrongdoing" by the targeted companies. It said that the "unannounced
inspections" were designed to gather "highly confidential ...
information [which] may also be easily withheld, concealed or
destroyed".

The inquiry is set to issue interim findings by the autumn and final
results in spring 2009. It will examine whether pharmaceutical
practices infringe EU treaty prohibitions on restrictive practices.

The generic drugs industry, which produces cheaper but chemically
identical versions of medicines once their patents expire, has long
accused innovative drug manufacturers of "ever-greening", or using
spurious grounds to delay competition by extending their exclusive
intellectual property rights.

Pfizer, GSK, Teva, Sanofi-Aventis, AstraZeneca, Boehringer-Ingelheim
and Merck of the US all confirmed that they were contacted by
commission officials. Most would make no further comment. "We are
co-operating with the inquiry," said AstraZeneca.

Via: "Prashant Iyengar"

Date:18/01/2008 URL:
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/01/18/stories/2008011857150600.htm Back

Tamil Nadu

Biodiversity information system to be created soon

Special Correspondent

Existing databases to be brought together to form 'meta-database'

CHENNAI: The National Biodiversity Authority will soon create an
Indian Biodiversity Information System, NBA Chairman S. Kannaiyan said
on Monday.

Talking to reporters here, Mr. Kannaiyan said the Authority would
bring together the existing databases to form a 'meta-database.'

The Indian Biodiversity Information System would have all the
information about India's biodiversity and bio-resources and their
traditional knowledge, including the people's biodiversity register.

A village-level biodiversity management committee, to be formed all
over the country, would prepare the people's biodiversity register, in
consultation with the locals.

The register would contain comprehensive information on the
availability and knowledge of local biological resources, their
medicinal or any other use and traditional knowledge associated with
them, he said.

The Authority and the State Biodiversity Boards would provide guidance
and technical support to the committee for preparing the register.

It sought an allocation of Rs. 50 crore in the 11th Plan for creating
the Indian Biodiversity Information System and the people's
biodiversity register..
Seminar for journalists

Together with the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, the
Authority would organise a two-day seminar for journalists on writing
about issues related to biodiversity.

It was expected to be held in the first week of March, he said.

(c) Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu

Via: Patrice Riemens

Whose pashmina is a good question. The answer is in any case NOT the
people who tend and own the pashmina goats. A few days ago there was a
documentary on TV5 Monde (the French satellite sender) where it appeared
that the semi-nomadic herders very up in the mountains were getting a
pitance for their wool, which immediately decupled (10x) in value as soon
as it reached the valley, and then went thru a hundredfold increase again
before reaching shops in the North, where customers again... etc etc.
(Although the docu was filmed was in Ladakh, but one can safely assume
it's no different in "Pakistani'or 'Indian' Kashmir) And if I am not
mistaken, the numbers were even worse than in the drugs trade!

I'd suggest that this is the urgent issue to be addressed rather than who
owns the brand name...
(yes I know Commons-Law is about this sort of """IP""" problems, but I
thought that a little reality check was in order here)



On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 02:33:04PM +0530, Prashant Iyengar wrote:

> http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c.php?leftnm=10&autono=311006

http://tinyurl. com transforms this unwieldy URL into:

http://tinyurl.com/ytforj

USE tinyurl in future, please!

>
> Whose pashmina?
> Business Standard / New Delhi January 18, 2008
> Squabbles between Pakistan and India over trade-related issues are
> multiplying. The latest to erupt is over intellectual property
> protection for the prized pashmina wool and the products made from it,
> by getting a geographical indication tag. In dispute is the
> application filed by a Jammu and Kashmir-based handicrafts association
> to register "Kashmiri Pashmina" as the exclusive brand for products
> made in this Indian state. This will lend "Kashmiri Pashmina" the same
> kind of brand protection enjoyed by, say, champagne and Darjeeling
> tea. And the challenger, predictably, is a pashmina-trading
> organisation in Pakistan which wants products produced in the part of
> Kashmir under that country's occupation to be given the same IPR
> protection.
>
(...)

Via: "Prashant Iyengar"

http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c.php?leftnm=10&autono=311006

Whose pashmina?
Business Standard / New Delhi January 18, 2008
Squabbles between Pakistan and India over trade-related issues are
multiplying. The latest to erupt is over intellectual property
protection for the prized pashmina wool and the products made from it,
by getting a geographical indication tag. In dispute is the
application filed by a Jammu and Kashmir-based handicrafts association
to register "Kashmiri Pashmina" as the exclusive brand for products
made in this Indian state. This will lend "Kashmiri Pashmina" the same
kind of brand protection enjoyed by, say, champagne and Darjeeling
tea. And the challenger, predictably, is a pashmina-trading
organisation in Pakistan which wants products produced in the part of
Kashmir under that country's occupation to be given the same IPR
protection.

Prima facie, Pakistan would appear within its rights to put forth such
a plea, as pashmina is produced from the under-growth of the hair of a
special changthangi or pashmina breed of goat that has been indigenous
to the high altitudes of the Himalayas, including the
Pakistan-occupied region. But if that logic is applied, Nepal too
should be made a party to this patent protection as its upper
mountainous reaches have also been home to pashmina goats for
thousands of years and pashmina-based products have been woven there
for a long period. Even in India, for that matter, pashmina goats have
not been confined to the Kashmir region, and have inhabited the higher
hills of Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal as well. The real difference
lies in the quality, as also exclusivity, of the pashmina fleece and
its products produced in different regions though, admittedly, all
kinds of genuine pashmina wool possess the envious trait of being
incomparably soft. India's case might be that additional scientific
effort has gone into refining the quality of pashmina and improving
the fleece yield of these goats.

While it must be presumed that these aspects will be kept in mind by
the geographical indications tribunal when considering the application
in question, it is important to recognise that pashmina imitations
have been in circulation, and been widely traded, in many parts of the
world, jeopardising the monopoly of the Himalayan region over this
unique wool. For most westerners, cashmere is a synonym for pashmina
and even genuine pashmina shawls, scarves and other garments made in
Kashmir are traded as cashmere shawls or scarves. Worse still, the
growing demand and below-par supplies of genuine pashmina garments
have enabled some unscrupulous manufacturers to make and sell products
of soft synthetic viscose as pashmina products, and thus to take
advantage of the high prices commanded by pashmina. All this needs to
be curbed, so fighting the IPR battle for getting a geographical
indication tag is only a part of the battle.

So, while the need for getting intellectual property safeguards for
pashmina is self-evident, it is not pashmina alone that needs to be
protected. There are other products as well, like aromatic basmati
rice, which are the common heritage of the sub-continent and which,
therefore, need to be safeguarded through mutual cooperation rather
than confrontation. Had Pakistan cooperated with India in getting a
geographical indication tag for basmati in the same way that it now
seeks protection for its pashmina, it would have provided a basis for
working together. It is not too late for the two countries to sit
together and work out a joint strategy on such issues.

Via: "Pranesh Prakash"