Articles by C Niranjan Rao

The capacity of countries to take advantage of the patent system bears a relationship with their stage of development. This paper explores the relationship between economic development and domestic and foreign patenting behaviour. The study uses a unique data set covering 55 countries and 24 years. It determines the association of domestic patenting with gross domestic product per capita and openness to trade, and the association of foreign patenting with these variables and with foreign direct investment as a proportion of gdp.

The WTO has formally adopted a solution to the defects of Article 31 of the TRIPS agreement, which stipulates that compulsory licences are predominantly for domestic use and therefore creates a peculiar situation for countries with insufficient pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. However, the solution seems intended more to ensure that not even a single tablet of drugs produced under this system escapes into the market and less to make medicines available to countries with limited manufacturing ability.

The three amendments to the Indian Patents Act were made alongside intense debates which emphasised that with the rights of the patent holders strengthened under TRIPS, there is an urgent need to balance this situation with more effective instruments so as to ensure that the public interest issues, as for example, access to medicines at affordable prices are also addressed. The global community took a major step towards bringing about a balance through the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS Agreement and Public Health. While the third amendment of the Indian Patents Act takes steps to address some of the more difficult issues in TRIPS, there remains a need to revisit the key provisions of the Patents Act keeping in view the imperatives of access to medicines.

This paper analyses the Indian seed system and raises questions about the need for developing countries - which are predominantly agricultural and where plant breeding is done by public agencies - to have plant variety protection (PVP). It also looks at the Plant Varieties Act in India, where a series of policy developments have opened up the domestic seed sector to large companies and foreign direct investment. The paper stresses the role of public sector investment in plant breeding that is not PVP-driven and acts as a counterbalance to expanding research activity by the private sector.

Patent System and Pharmaceutical Sector Biswajit Dhar C Niranjan Rao ANALYSIS of the impact of changes in patent laws have acquired prominence in the context of the patent regime that the Uruguay Round of GATT is seeking to introduce. The volume of literature produced on the subject has been phenomenal which has contributed to the ongoing debate. But unfortunately there is also a flip side to the debate. Articles have been produced without adequate understanding of the terrain that is sought to be covered. Authors of such articles tend to take a predetermined position and then try to produce masses of data to overawe the uninitiated. The contribution by Prasad and Bhat (1993) forms a part of this category of articles. Right from the manner in which the problem is posed to the methodology adopted, nor. to speak of the inaccuracies in factual details and interpreta- tions, the article appears to be some what contrived. The intent of the authors may have been to express their support for the Dunkel proposals and to convey the message that India should not be afraid of the proposals. But even in doing so they should have made a more competent attempt at handling the complex of issues involved.