Indian draft IPR policy criticised by antiglobalisation group
SJM has delivered a detailed criticism of India's draft intellectual property rights policy
The Indian government's attempts to put in place an effective IP protection policy have been strongly criticised by the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), an economic wing of Sangh Parivar, which advocates Swadeshi as an alternate economic policy to globalisation, relying on the social institutional order as the socioeconomic delivery system.
The Indian government decided that it was time to move beyond the rhetoric surrounding the patentability thresholds for pharmaceutical innovations and have a comprehensive IP Policy in consonance with India's national priorities and development needs. However, in a hard hitting two page letter to Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Commerce and Industry, Ashwani Mahajan, Co-Convenor, of the SJM, has delivered a detailed criticism of India's draft intellectual property rights (IPR) policy.
The draft IPR policy is considered to have Prime Minister Modi’s blessing, given his push to improve relations and increase business prospects with the US and other western nations.
An IPR think tank was constituted with the mandate of drafting a National Intellectual Property Rights Policy. The constitution of the think tank coincided with the formation of the joint Indo-US Working Group on IPR, and was mostly seen as a by-product of US pressure. The first draft of the National IPR Policy was submitted in December 2014, and invited comments and suggestions from stakeholders.
Mahajan has now come down hard on the policy decision. In a note entitled 'Don’t dilute Patent Act', he has noted that if Section 3(d) is diluted, then it may affect the prices of many drugs and thus the healthcare needs of 1.2 billion Indians and people around the globe.
In his letter to the Minister, Mahajan mentions the 'undue hurry' with which the think tank was formed, and blames this haste as the reason why it `does not reflect the development realities and needs of India', and in fact 'seriously undermines India’s technological progress in critical areas to address the development challenges of the nation.'
Citing Japan, South Korea and more recently China as examples of countries that `emulate technologies as strategy for technological catch-up to move away from the technology dependency to technology generation', Mahajan’s letter points out that `a domestic IP regime tilted towards protection and enforcement of IP rights without optimal use of limitations and exceptions would retard the attempts of technological catching up'.
The letter then ends with four suggestions to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to rectify the shortcomings. It urges the goverment to direct the reconstituted IP think tank to identify the suboptimal flexibilities in the national IP regime, and make recommendations to optimise the use of flexibilities.
