India-USPTO conference on TK & patenting kicks off in New Delhi

The Financial Express reports that India, the United States Patents & Trademark Office (USPTO) along with representatives of Saarc countries and WIPO are having a three day conference in New Delhi to deal with developing countries concerns in regards the protection of traditional knowledge (TK), genetic resources & folklore – all of them being subjects not adequately covered by TRIPS.

Readers may remember that Sumati had, way back in Novemebr 2007, pointed out to an ET article on the efforts of the Indian Government to get the US to sign an agreement to protect Traditional Knowledge. At that time the Indian government was trying to persuade the Americans to sign an agreement on sharing the Indian traditional knowledge digital library so that it can cross-check with India before granting patents on products and their properties and uses that have been known in India for centuries. The reason behind this move was the fact that a large number of patents were being granted by the USPTO although these patents were actually based only on Indian TK without an independent inventive step.

The above issue is one of the major issues that is sought to be covered in the current conference. While the Indians do not want this data-base to be put in the public domain the Americans are insisting that the database be made public. The Americans argue that that it is only when the library is in public domain can they invalidate a patent on the grounds that the invention was already a part of a prior art. It is going to require all the negotiating skill of the Joint Secretary DIPP – N.N. Prasad – to reach a mutually agreeable situation.

Other issues that will most probably be dealt with in the conference are the issue of disclosure of source of biological resources in the patent application. SpicyIP has already blogged on this issue over here and here.

While it is great to see the Indian Government pushing so hard for the protection of TK, SpicyIP would like to remind the government that they are yet to amend the Biological Diversity Act to ensure that Prior Informed Consent is indeed a mandatory requirement of the law.