Commentary/Ashok Mitra

The long arm of the patent laws

It happened just before the United States Congress recessed in September for the elections. By an overwhelming majority the House of Representatives passed a resolution. Any breach of a US patent by any person or entity in any part of the world, the resolution declared in stentorian style, is tantamount to a breach of US security: The resolution authorised American security personnel to proceed against such a person or entity so that due punishment could be meted out to him/her/it.

Consider the implications. Suppose a transnational corporation, with its principal base of activity in the United States, smuggles out some neemor tulsi or parijit plants from India, engages researchers in a laboratory in Florida or Nevada to produce a range of herbal medicines by extracting properties from these plants, rushes to have these medicines patented with this or that branch of the US Patents Office, and thereafter claims to have established exclusive marketing rights to sell the medicines all over the world.

Now suppose a local apothecary in Rajamundry or Chapra, altogether innocent of the majesty of American patent legislation and the global concerns of the US House of Representatives, uses in its own manner the ingredients of neem or tulsi or parijat to produce similar or identical medicine and sells them at one-hundredth of the price charged by the transitional corporation.

According to official American punditry, the owner of this local apothecary would have thereby infringed US patent legislation: as per the resolution passed by the House of Representatives, American global security was, as a result, gravely endangered; security personnel of the great United States of America would now move fast to repair the damage done.

At this point, a pronouncement about half a dozen years ago by a circuit judge in some remote corner of the United States assumes relevance. Agents of the US government, that judgment averred, have the right to apprehend in any part of the world - and, in case necessary, even kill - anyone suspected of having conspired or acted in a manner which adversely affects American security.

Conceivably as a sequel to that judgment, US embassies and consulates everywhere, including in India, had posted an alluring newspaper advertisement; all and sundry were urged by the advertisement to post information they possessed regarding individuals or groups who they suspected to have been indulging in conspiracy to bring down the lawfully established government of the United States of America; cash award up to half a million dollars was promised for each such worthwhile information.

As far as is known, that American promise still holds. A golden opportunity therefore could come the way of x, y, or z in Rajamundry or Chapra to make a quick buck. He or she could duly feel tempted to report to the US embassy in New Delhi, or to any of US consular office, on the nefarious doings of the small-time apothecary in Rajamundry or Chapra, producing low-cost herbal medicines from neem or tulsi or parijat extracts, thereby defying a US patent, thereby breaching US security.

Formidable legal luminaries from the United States would insist that the apothecary owner was liable to arrest, on Indian soil itself, by an American security agent, who would also have the discretion to ship the accused to the United States to stand trial there.

Should an Indian judge or an Indian police officer intervene and arrange protection for the apothecary owner, that Indian judge or Indian police officer would be equally guilty of violating American security and hence liable to be packed off to the United States to stand trial. Were s/he to resist arrest, the American agent would have the right to shoot him or her, on Indian soil, for the unpardonable offence of breaching American security?

No part of the above narration is a fable. It is an instance of the network of plans for global domination the world's greatest power and its cohorts have been dreaming for long and have now started to execute with a cool determination.

The Marrakesh Treaty signed by a hundred-odd country governments under American pressure in early 1995 and the new international agency it has begot, the World Trade Organisation, are intended to impose the tyranny of the US patents system on the rest of the world. The pretext is free and untrammeled international trade; the actual objective is to ensure limitless exploitation of the resources of the poorer countries. In a regime of so called free trade, the early birds collect all the worms.

The advanced industrial countries, and the transnational corporations they have spawned, have the advantage of an early start and first patenting. With their superior financial clout, they are in a position to buy outright raw materials or bio-diverisities a poor country such as India possesses, process and patent products by making use of these raw materials or bio-diversities and mulct consumers by marketing these products at fantastically high prices.

Free trade is in no time to be supplanted by a grim world of monopolies and relentless squeezing of the poor by the rich; the countries which originally owned these raw materials or bio-diversities would be precluded from manufacturing products based on these materials or ingredients; they could do so only with the approval of, and according to specifications set by, the transnational patentees.

Such is the new charter of international slavery, otherwise known as the Marrakesh Treaty. The demoralised government presiding in New Delhi at the time was in a scampering hurry to sign the treaty. No debate was allowed to take place on the floor of Parliament, nor did any consultations take place with the state governments.

The Constitution, the explanation was proffered, entitles the Union Government to sign any international treaty. That constitutional prerogative does not, however, cover the right to sign a covenant according to which decisions on the range of goods the country could produce and sell as well as the price at which the goods are to be sold would be the prerogative of external agencies.

One problem has nonetheless proved insurmountable for the lovers of foreign patents. India's patent legislation needs to be amended if the WTO hegemony and the suzerainty of US patents are to be firmly established over here. Our Parliament has, till this date, refused to buckle in though. In matters concerning economic policy, the new administration in New Delhi is, however, a carbon copy of the one it has succeeded.

Hemmed in by foreign debt and by the belief that the nation's further survival hinges exclusively on incurring more foreign debt, it thinks it does not have too many bargaining counters.

A great many people within the administration are, in fact, not interested in any bargaining at all. This lot certainly includes a few ministers, and quite a collage of senior civil servants. Even as the last monsoon session of Parliament got going, a senior civil servant announced to the world that the necessary amendments to the country's patent laws to make them harmonious with the WTO conditionalities were ready and scheduled to be passed soon. His minister had not heard about these amendments, nor had Parliament; an official press note disowned the secretary's statement.

Barely two months later, yet another senior official doles out to the press the same kind of story about impending legislations in Parliament. As on the previous occasion, a ministerial denial followed.

The permissive society. Secretaries speak out of turn. They are contradicted. That is all; no disciplinary action is proposed against them. Meanwhile, the US administration is losing its patience, so in the US Congress, so too the transnational corporations. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation is itching to set up office in India, so as to enable it to pick up such Indian scientists, researchers, economists, politicians, lawyers, as dare to defy US patent laws.

The Indian media have made up their mind: they have taught themselves to love American patent laws. Reports on opposition to the emasculation of our patent rights will accordingly not find mention in the press. Resistance groups will have to rely upon surreptitious notes from the underground. They will soon run the risk, even in their own country, of being pounced upon by the upholders of American security.

Dr Ashok Mitra, the wellknown economist and former finance minister of West Bengal, is a Marxist member of Parliament.