The CPI (M) has asked the Manmohan Singh government to rewrite the draft manual that will implement the Patents Amendment Act, 2005, because, the party says, the guidelines 'subvert' the proposals made in the law.
A draft of the manual that will steer the patents Act has been put on the commerce ministry website for public comment.
The draft has been written by the controller-general of patents, designs and trademarks. It is called the 'Draft Manual of Patent Practice and Procedure'.
Although there is no deadline for the finalisation of the draft, it is likely to be ready by the end of the year. The Patents Amendment Act, 2005, was passed after tough bargaining between the Congress and the CPI (M).
Left leaders, however, say their efforts to safeguard Indian interests in the global market could be defeated because of the manner in which the draft manual has been worded.
The party says a major problem of the draft manual is that substantial portions of it are based on the documents and understanding of the patents laws of countries that are quite different from the amended Indian patents law. It says this is especially true for the sections on biotechnology and software.
All the examples in the software section, for example, are taken from the US and Europe, which currently grant patents on even naturally occurring genetic material, life form patents (US), software patents, business process patenting (US), new use patents, patenting of a minor variation of an original molecule and new dosage patents.
None of these is allowed in India under the Amended Patents Act, 2005. The party says there are similar problems with software patents. A sore point during the debate on the patents Bill was the issue of embedded software.
The Left did not want embedded software to be patentable. Accordingly, this provision was removed in the Bill passed in March this year. But the draft manual states clearly that embedded software is patentable.
Not only that, software patenting has been sought now to be introduced by defining embedded software in such general terms that virtually any programme that runs on a computer can be patented.
"Therefore, the clause in the Indian Act that computer programmes per se cannot be patented loses all meaning," the party says.
In the section on biotechnology, the party says, it is implied that a new gene sequence is patentable. According to the Indian law, only micro-organisms are patentable and not gene sequences.
Clearly, the manual has based its guidelines on practices followed by the European Patents Office or the US Patents Office.
The party concludes by saying the draft manual has to be rewritten on the basis of the Act as passed by Parliament. Doing otherwise will imply the undermining of Parliament, the party says.
Patents problem
- Left leaders say their efforts to safeguard Indian interests in the global market could be defeated because of the manner in which the draft manual has been worded.
- A draft of the manual has been put on the commerce ministry website for public comment.
- The guidelines 'subvert' the proposals made in the law.
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