[Ip-health] Indian Express - Mashelkar replies: I stand by the patent report, 100 per cent

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Mashelkar replies: I stand by the patent report, 100 per cent


Amitabh Sinha

Posted online: Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST

New Delhi, FEBRUARY 23
Strongly defending his report which argues for encouraging patents for =93i=
ncremental innovations,=94 R A Mashelkar, former Director General of the Co=
uncil of Scientific and Industrial Research, has said he is =93deeply hurt=
=94 by the attack on his integrity.

Left leaders, activists and even the generic drug industry, seized on one p=
aragraph in the report that was reproduced ad verbatim from a lawyer=92s te=
stimony to accuse the panel of =93disguising MNC interest as national inter=
est.=94

=93Just because one paragraph has been reproduced from another source witho=
ut attribution, you cannot bomb the principles on which it was based,=94 Ma=
shelkar told The Indian Express today. =93I stand by the report and its fin=
dings, 100 per cent...It=92s an attack on my integrity. Sixty-four years of=
 my services are being sought to be trashed because of one error that inadv=
ertently crept in. I will not let this happen.=94

Taking a dig at the pharmaceutical companies criticizing the report, he sai=
d, =93These are the same companies who are claiming patents on similar inno=
vations in other countries like Brazil. But they do not want the same princ=
iple to be applied here. Such double standards do not work.=94

Mashelkar and four other experts were told to examine, besides other things=
, whether patents could be granted on =93incremental innovations=94 =97 imp=
rovements made on an existing substance =97 in the drug industry. Mashelkar=
=92s committee concluded that under the TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual P=
roperty Rights) regime, to which India subscribes, incremental innovations =
can indeed be patented, provided the conditions of novelty, non-obviousness=
 and utility are met.

=93Incremental innovations have to be allowed to be granted patents. This i=
s how science will advance. There are hardly 30-35 new chemical entities di=
scovered every year but hundreds of incremental innovations are registered.=
=94

Mashelkar, who retired as the director general of Council for Scientific an=
d Industrial Research (CSIR) in December last year after 11 years at the he=
lm, said the committee had made it very clear that it was against =93ever-g=
reening,=94 a term used to describe the efforts of companies to obtain pate=
nts after making trivial changes in existing substances. =93The Committee i=
s explicit in not allowing any frivolous patenting. We are completely again=
st ever-greening,=94 he said. =93But incremental innovation is a fact of li=
fe. We have to accept that.=94

In the panel=92s 56-page report submitted to the government, one paragraph =
was found to have been reproduced from a submission made to the committee b=
y lawyer Shamnad Basheer, currently a professor in intellectual property la=
w at the George Washington University Law School. Following the discovery, =
Mashelkar wrote to the government asking it to withdraw the report and expr=
essing apologies for the error which had crept in during the time of drafti=
ng of the report by a sub-group of the committee.

LOOK WHO THE LEFT SAYS HAVE SOLD OUT

Besides Mashelkar (above), the following were on the panel:

=95n Prof Goverdhan Mehta, Director, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

=95 Prof Asis Datta, Director, National Centre for Plant Genome Research

=95 Prof N R Madhava Menon, Director, National Judicial Academy, Bhopal

=95 Prof Moolchand Sharma, Director, National Law Institute University, Bho=
pal
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