Is the US style of examination right for India?
Via: "Prabhu Ram"
http://www.business-standard.com/common/news_article.php?leftnm=lmnu2&subLeft=3&autono=321485&tab=r
Latha Jishnu: Is the US style of examination right for India?
PATENTLY ABSURD
Latha Jishnu / New Delhi April 30, 2008
Intellectual Property (IP) is still a strange beast in this country.
People eye it rather warily, uncertain of its temperament (how hard
will it bite or is it the clawing sort?) and the hidden threat in its
still unfolding contours. To familiarise businessmen with this
creature, industry organisations have been doing a fair amount of
spadework – organising seminars, workshops and talks by visiting
experts. It was only towards the end of 2006, however, that such
events became high-profile, regular and more widespread.
That's when Dominic Keating of the US Patent & Trademark Office
(USPTO) began functioning as First Secretary (IP) at the US embassy in
Delhi. He put together a small team, one lawyer, IP specialist Sanjit
Kaur Batra, and two assistants, and made it an evangelist station for
spreading the light on IPR or intellectual property rights. He forged
an alliance with the Confederation of Indian Industry to make IPR as
much of a talking point with businessmen as VAT (value added tax),
another much-distrusted concept some years ago, and appears to have
succeeded to a large extent. He also began reaching out to sections of
society one would normally not both with –schoolkids and housewives –
to allow the idea of IPR to take root in a country which the developed
world considers as rather lax on the issue.
The overarching theme of such conclaves, many of them organised in
concert with prominent American universities, is that protecting IPR
creates wealth and transforms economies but if you came to brass tacks
it was invariably about combating piracy and counterfeit goods. But
the US evidently has more long-term goals in view. In December of that
year India and the US signed a memorandum of understanding to further
cooperation on IP rights, the focus being on the training of personnel
with a view "to strengthening the working of the IP systems in the two
countries".
Much of the effort has gone into training our patent examiners, an
issue that is threatening to become a hot potato for Delhi. Over the
past year and a half, the USPTO has provided long-term courses for
about a dozen patent examiners, apart from week-long courses for
sundry others from the customs officials, police and the registrar of
copyrights to the judiciary on the technicalities of the American
patent system. Even a judge of the Delhi High Court has been taken to
the USPTO for a short-term course.
This is bound to raise hackles here. India's patent examiners are,
admittedly, ill-equipped and poorly qualified for their task, and the
government has done little to set matters right. Instead, it appears
to think that training courses in the most sophisticated patent
offices of the world is a good way of overcoming the huge problem of
human resources in India's patent system. Apart from the US, India has
signed agreement with the European Patent Office, and the governments
of Japan and Switzerland among others for training our patent
examiners. Legal experts and health activists, however, believe this
is fraught with peril for a developing country that needs to keep
public health concerns paramount.
They warn that the strict standards of patentability under India's
patent amendment Act of 2005 are not reflected in the laws of the
developed countries where big pharma companies are based. A report of
the National Institute for Healthcare Management on Changing Patterns
of Pharmaceutical Innovation (2002) underlined this point when it said
the majority of pharmaceutical patenting in the US is for new uses of
old compounds. Section 3 d of the Indian Patent Act, on the other
hand, strictly bars evergreening, the practice of lengthening the life
of a drug patent through trivial innovations.
Interestingly, the US patent system is under attack at home and
Congress along with huge swathes of American industry is debating a
major overhaul of its processes.
IPR took on new form and meaning in 2005 when India reintroduced
product patents after a gap of over 40 years –the Patent Act of 1970
recognised only process patents –but policymakers did little to
prepare the country for the avalanche of patent applications that have
inundated the four offices of the Controller General of Patents (CGP)
since 1995. But leaving the training on substantive examination to
countries whose laws are not in synch with ours is likely to create
more litigation – the courts are already clogged with such cases –and
add to the lack of clarity on what is patentable in India.
Training in the US and Europe has the potential of improving the
technical skills of India's patent examiners but there is a real
concern that they will willy-nilly absorb standards of evaluation
which are not relevant here. Clearly a double-edged sword.
http://www.business-standard.com/common/news_article.php?leftnm=lmnu2&subLeft=3&autono=321485&tab=r
Latha Jishnu: Is the US style of examination right for India?
PATENTLY ABSURD
Latha Jishnu / New Delhi April 30, 2008
Intellectual Property (IP) is still a strange beast in this country.
People eye it rather warily, uncertain of its temperament (how hard
will it bite or is it the clawing sort?) and the hidden threat in its
still unfolding contours. To familiarise businessmen with this
creature, industry organisations have been doing a fair amount of
spadework – organising seminars, workshops and talks by visiting
experts. It was only towards the end of 2006, however, that such
events became high-profile, regular and more widespread.
That's when Dominic Keating of the US Patent & Trademark Office
(USPTO) began functioning as First Secretary (IP) at the US embassy in
Delhi. He put together a small team, one lawyer, IP specialist Sanjit
Kaur Batra, and two assistants, and made it an evangelist station for
spreading the light on IPR or intellectual property rights. He forged
an alliance with the Confederation of Indian Industry to make IPR as
much of a talking point with businessmen as VAT (value added tax),
another much-distrusted concept some years ago, and appears to have
succeeded to a large extent. He also began reaching out to sections of
society one would normally not both with –schoolkids and housewives –
to allow the idea of IPR to take root in a country which the developed
world considers as rather lax on the issue.
The overarching theme of such conclaves, many of them organised in
concert with prominent American universities, is that protecting IPR
creates wealth and transforms economies but if you came to brass tacks
it was invariably about combating piracy and counterfeit goods. But
the US evidently has more long-term goals in view. In December of that
year India and the US signed a memorandum of understanding to further
cooperation on IP rights, the focus being on the training of personnel
with a view "to strengthening the working of the IP systems in the two
countries".
Much of the effort has gone into training our patent examiners, an
issue that is threatening to become a hot potato for Delhi. Over the
past year and a half, the USPTO has provided long-term courses for
about a dozen patent examiners, apart from week-long courses for
sundry others from the customs officials, police and the registrar of
copyrights to the judiciary on the technicalities of the American
patent system. Even a judge of the Delhi High Court has been taken to
the USPTO for a short-term course.
This is bound to raise hackles here. India's patent examiners are,
admittedly, ill-equipped and poorly qualified for their task, and the
government has done little to set matters right. Instead, it appears
to think that training courses in the most sophisticated patent
offices of the world is a good way of overcoming the huge problem of
human resources in India's patent system. Apart from the US, India has
signed agreement with the European Patent Office, and the governments
of Japan and Switzerland among others for training our patent
examiners. Legal experts and health activists, however, believe this
is fraught with peril for a developing country that needs to keep
public health concerns paramount.
They warn that the strict standards of patentability under India's
patent amendment Act of 2005 are not reflected in the laws of the
developed countries where big pharma companies are based. A report of
the National Institute for Healthcare Management on Changing Patterns
of Pharmaceutical Innovation (2002) underlined this point when it said
the majority of pharmaceutical patenting in the US is for new uses of
old compounds. Section 3 d of the Indian Patent Act, on the other
hand, strictly bars evergreening, the practice of lengthening the life
of a drug patent through trivial innovations.
Interestingly, the US patent system is under attack at home and
Congress along with huge swathes of American industry is debating a
major overhaul of its processes.
IPR took on new form and meaning in 2005 when India reintroduced
product patents after a gap of over 40 years –the Patent Act of 1970
recognised only process patents –but policymakers did little to
prepare the country for the avalanche of patent applications that have
inundated the four offices of the Controller General of Patents (CGP)
since 1995. But leaving the training on substantive examination to
countries whose laws are not in synch with ours is likely to create
more litigation – the courts are already clogged with such cases –and
add to the lack of clarity on what is patentable in India.
Training in the US and Europe has the potential of improving the
technical skills of India's patent examiners but there is a real
concern that they will willy-nilly absorb standards of evaluation
which are not relevant here. Clearly a double-edged sword.