[Ip-health] Business Standard: Mashelkar gets time to purge `follies`

[Achal Prabhala]

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      Mashelkar gets time to purge `follies`

      PHARMA MUDDLE

      BS Reporter / New Delhi March 15, 2007



      The commerce ministry has allowed the technical expert group headed b=
y former Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) chief RA Mash=
elkar to correct the =93technical inacuracies=94 in the patent law report a=
nd re-submit it within three months.

      Mashelkar had wanted the report to be withdrawn as 10 sentences in th=
e report were plagiarised due to =93inadvertent=94 mistakes at the drafting=
 level.

      Meanwhile, Graham Dutfield, a senior researcher with the University o=
f London, in a mail to Internet discussion groups has rejected Mashelkar=92=
s report as =93absolute rubbish=94 that it =93should be trashed completely=
=94.

      Dutfield=92s reasons: =93These people plagiarised 14 lines of Shamnad=
 Basheer=92s paper plus 22 lines comprising a slight =93repackaging=94 of t=
he definitions of micro-organism compiled from the literature by Margaret L=
lewelyn and Mike Adcock for the Quaker UN Office as presented (and correctl=
y cited) in Basheer=92s report. That=92s my count but I may have missed mor=
e than this. So that is 36 lines from, well, not a 56-page report, as the I=
ndian Press tends to state, but one that just about stretches to 10 pages e=
xcluding annexes...

      =93... the whole report looks very suspicious to me. My guess is that=
 the conclusions had been decided on from the start. This would explain the=
ir total disinterest in producing any original and objective legal and tech=
nical evidence to support those conclusions. I think they just couldn=92t b=
e bothered. Therein lies the real scandal of this affair, not the plagiaris=
m...=94

      Reacting to the government=92s decision, CPI(M) reiterated today its =
demand that the patent issues should be handed over to a joint parliamentar=
y committee and not left with the technical expert group (TEG) as =93vital =
portions of the report were an act of plagariasm and cheating=94 and were a=
imed at protecting =93the interest of multinationals=94.

      TEG was set up to examine TRIPS (the trade related intellectual prope=
rty rights) agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) compatibility o=
f limiting the grant of patents to new chemical entities (only new discover=
ies and not new uses of old discoveries).

      It was also asked to examine whether it would be compatible with TRIP=
S to exclude micro-organisms from patenting.
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