One of the principal issues on which the controversy over patents law in India has come to be centred is whether in the field of chemical products, food articles and drugs and pharmaceutical products should be made unpatentable and patents should be restricted to processes. The justification for such a change in law is that whereas a product patent gives the patentee the monopoly of that product, under a system of process patents the same product could be manufactured by different patentees using different processes. In his Report on the Revision of the Patents Law submitted to the Government of India in 1959 Justice N Rajagopala Ayyangar recorded that: the denial of product claims is necessary in order that such Economic & Political Weekly
EPW
january 24, 2015
important articles of daily use as medicine or
food which are vital to the health of the community should be made available to every one at reasonable prices and that no monopoly should be granted in respect of such articles. It is considered that the refusal of product patents would enlarge the area of competition and thus result in the production of these articles in sufficient quantity and at the lowest possible cost to the public. In the current controversy those who want the patents law to be left as it is, mainly the international drug companies and their Indian spokesmen, have made an attempt to confuse the issue by contending that under the existing patent system in the country patent claims for chemical products, including drugs and pharmaceuticals, can be sustained only when these products are manufactured by the process described in the patent specification. Following from this, it has been argued, any number of manufacturers can make the same product using different processes. This seemingly convincing claim is, in fact, highly misleading and needs to be refuted... vol l no 4
In any case, there is enough evidence to show
that the present patent system in this country has worked no better, from the point of view of encouraging competitive research and manufacture, than a product patent system. The need to amend the law is, therefore, incontestable. According to reports, the amendments to the Patents Act which the Government is expected to move in the coming session of Parliament will seek to reduce the term of patents, put a ceiling on royalty rates and make the provision for compulsory licensing more effective. While these changes are necessary and have been long overdue, they will lose much of their impact unless the award of patents in the field of chemical products, food articles and drugs and pharmaceuticals is restricted to processes. If the objective of reducing the monopolistic consequences of patents is to be achieved, it should be explicitly laid down that the patentees exclusive claim will be limited to the process that he actually uses, leaving others free to manufacture the product by other processes.
In The Wake of The Alleged Corporate Spying, It Is Pertinent To Recall The All-Embracive Provisions of The Official Secrets Act and The Way It Has Been Applied in The Recent Past