Deepak Kumar Rath
THE Patents (Amendment) Act, ratified by parliament is not pro-people, asserted Smt Vandana Shiva, Director of Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, in a press conference held at New Delhi. According to her, "It is an Act to by-pass the patent system to grant Exclusive Marketing Rights (EMRs) as statutory rights to the pharmaceutical and agri-chemical corporations which hold product patent in any country outside India."

Smt Shiva opined that the Patents (Amendment) Act is not an implementation of Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights(TRIPS) because it has failed to introduce amendments that would exclude patents that harm the environment, public health, livelihood and public morality.

Patents (Amendment) Act is nothing but the granting of irresponsible and absolute corporate monopolies in vital areas of food and medicine. Exclusive Marketing Rights (EMRs) in agrichemicals and drugs are direct assult on the right to food and right to health which are protected in the Indian constitution through the right of life, she added.

Smt Shiva accused the Government on misleading the nation on EMR issue. First the Government, has let the people wrongly believe that granting EMRs to corporations is a WTO obligation. However, the Government does not need to grant EMRs under WTO rules and the country can adopt the preferable route of framing the patent laws, she said. Smt Shiva alleged that pressure in this case has not come from the WTO but from US and European Corporations.

Contrary to the Government's opinion that the EMRs would help Scientific Research in India Smt Shiva pointed out that since the EMR Ordinance is for exclusive rights for marketing in India on the basis of foreign patents, and since it bypasses patent laws, Indian reasearch and development will not be protected or enhanced. "In fact the R&D budgets would shrink and exclusive monopolies would harm the economy", She warned.

The Government has propagated that the products for which the EMRs are granted will only arrive in the market after 2003 since it takes approximately eight years for product development and commercialization and EMRs will only be given to patents granted in another country after 1995. However, a letter, written to the European Commission by the Glaxo Well-comes Manger of Global Intellectual Property, reveals that the MNCs are ready to market their products from this year itself.

On the basis of bio-piracy based patent applications in India and patents granted in other country after 1995, a corporation can claim exclusive marketing monopoly on formulations based on ginger, peper, arhar, amla etc. with just minor modifications in the methods of extraction and processing. "Unfortunately the present Patents Amendement Bill allows such trivial and obvious modifications to be counted as inventions," Smt Vandana added. Since 70 per cent of the Indian health care is provided by herbal medicines, EMRs based on biopiracy will immediately deprieve the poorer of the two-third of India of their right to health care. To counter the bio-piracy mafia, we will have a patent literacy campaign and EMRs campaign so that people become aware of the problems they are going to face, added Smt Shiva.