[Ip-health] INDIAN GOVERNMENT MAINTAINS ANTI-ACCESS POSITION REGARDING PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH

[Anjali Dalal]

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For Immediate Release

Contact: Anjali Dalal
Email: anjali.dalal@yale.edu



*The controversial Protection and Utilization of Public Funded Intellectual
Property Bill, set to threaten access to medicines and future innovative
research*



Berkeley, CA =96 Despite appeals from Universities Allied for Essential
Medicines (UAEM), and other public interest groups, the Indian government
has refused to modify a secretly drafted legislation that would govern the
patenting of the results of publicly funded-research including
publicly-funded medical research. As it currently stands, the Bill will har=
m
access to medicines and impede the ability of scientists to conduct
innovative research due to a lack of measures to protect the public
interest.



The Indian government made only cosmetic changes to the legislation: the
Bill still removes publicly-funded innovations from the public sphere and
permits monopoly pricing on publicly-funded products without any effective
safeguards to protect the public interest. The legislation is modeled on th=
e
US Bayh-Dole Act which has led to a proliferation of patenting activity and
the creation of patent thickets.  These create barriers to new innovative
research and fail to protect the interests of American taxpayers who end up
subsidizing the discovery of medicines they are often then unable to afford=
.



Proponents of the Indian Bill claim it will help India to commercialize
publicly-funded research by encouraging research institutions to seek
patents. As a UAEM white paper on a recent version of the bill argues, the
law duplicates the failures of the US Bayh-Dole act and in fact offers even
fewer access protections.  To read the entire white paper, visit
http://www.essentialmedicine.org/bayh-dole/.



"UAEM is very disappointed in the government's push to enact this flawed
legislation. In consultation with the public, the government must make the
changes necessary to avoid replicating the failures of Bayh-Dole," said
Ethan Guillen, Executive Director of UAEM. "We continue to urge the Indian
government to reconsider its position on this legislation as it threatens
the health and welfare of the very public who fund this critical research."



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*About UAEM*

* *

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a coalition of
students at over 40 top research institutions across the United States,
Canada and United Kingdom. UAEM's mission is to ensure that people in
developing countries have access to medicines developed in universities and
that university medical research addresses to the needs of the majority of
the world's population. As an organization that values innovation, we work
to empower students to find new ways to improve access to health throughout
the world.
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