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The battle of haldi is over; the war lies ahead
George Iype in New Delhi
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research may have won a big legal battle when it got the US Patents and Trademark Office to reject claims for a patent on the healing properties of turmeric (haldi). But it has its task cut out when it takes on the plan by the European Union to patent some vital life forms.
CSIR scientists are now drafting a well-supported techno-legal case against a law proposed by the EU, Council Director General R A Mashelkar told Rediff On The NeT.
The EU has proposed a law allowing long-term patents on living materials, including plants, animals and even parts of the human body.
If this law becomes a reality, it will allow multinational corporations to impose monopoly rights over rare life forms found in developing countries, the CSIR director general said.
The success of the turmeric case demonstrates that Indian and other Third World countries are quite capable of fighting complex techno-legal intellectual property rights cases and meet the challenges of the World Trade Organisation, Mashelkar said.
CSIR feels such monopolies could have an adverse effect on India and other developing countries which already suffer from the problems of poverty and food security. He felt such blanket rights would give corporate plant breeders an unreasonably powerful hold on the food market.
Terming the turmeric triumph as a watershed in the Third World's fight for patenting rights, Mashelkar said India is now ready to protect other possible areas of traditional Indian knowledge in which multinational companies might get interested.
The turmeric case began after the University of Mississippi Medical Centre in the US filed an application for a patent at the US PTO for the use of turmeric powder as a wound-healing agent on December 28, 1993. The US PTO granted patenting rights over turmeric to the UMMC on March 28, 1995.
But the CSIR petitioned USPTO in June 1996, challenging the patenting rights over turmeric, which it said has been used as a wound-healing property in India for centuries. The Council submitted relevant documents before the patent office to prove how India has been using turmeric powder as a wound-healing agent for ages.
The battle between CSIR and the UMMC on the patenting rights over turmeric went on for nearly two years. However, on August 13 this year, the US PTO rejected the UMMC's patenting rights over turmeric.
This is the first case where the use of traditional knowledge base of a Third World country patented through a US patent has been successfully challenged with the USPTO, says Mashelkar.
"Our victory on turmeric proves that India or any other developing country can be major players in the patenting world, if we are able to build a foolproof case against patenting rights," he said.
Last year, India's failure to challenge the patenting of the medicinal properties of neem led to suspicion of US laws and policies on intellectual property rights.
Now that it has shown the way, CSIR scientists want the new panel of experts set up by the prime minister on intellectual property rights to ensure that the proposed Patents Act in India take care of all crucial patenting issues.
RELATED REPORT:
How the legal war was won
EARLIER REPORT:
Major victory for India as US refuses to patent turmeric
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