{"id":189828,"date":"2022-06-10T20:40:37","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T15:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=189828"},"modified":"2022-06-10T20:40:37","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T15:10:37","slug":"explained-the-indian-patent-regime-and-its-clash-with-the-u-s-norms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/explained-the-indian-patent-regime-and-its-clash-with-the-u-s-norms\/","title":{"rendered":"Explained | The Indian patent regime and its clash with the U.S. norms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h5><b>What is the News?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The U.S Trade Representative(USTR) has released <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/special-301-report-2022-india-among-most-challenging-economies-says-ustr\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Special 301 Report 2022.<\/span><\/a> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">report has said that India was one of the most challenging major economies as far as IP protection and enforcement is concerned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The report retains India on its Priority Watch List along with six other countries- Argentina, Chile, China, Indonesia, Russia and Venezuela.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>About India\u2019s Patent Regime<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Patent is an exclusive set of rights granted for an invention which may be a product or process that provides a new way of doing something or offers a new technical solution to a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian patents are governed by the Indian Patent Act of 1970. Under the act, patents are granted if the invention fulfils the following criteria: <\/span><b>1)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It should be novel, <\/span><b>2) <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It should have inventive step\/s or it must be non-obvious, <\/span><b>3)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It should be capable of Industrial application and <\/span><b>4)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It should not attract the provisions of sections 3 and 4 of the Patents Act 1970.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>India and TRIPS<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India became a party to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement following its membership to the World Trade Organization on January 1, 1995.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Following this, it amended its internal patent laws to comply with TRIPS, most notably in 2005, when it introduced pharmaceutical product patents into the legislation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India is also a signatory to several IPR-related conventions, including the <strong>Berne convention<\/strong> which governs copyright, the <strong>Paris Convention<\/strong> for the Protection of Industrial Property and others.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Note<\/strong>: The original Indian Patents Act did not grant patent protection to pharmaceutical products to ensure that medicines were available to the masses at a low price. This was based on the recommendations of a <strong>Rajagopala Ayyangar Commission<\/strong> in 1959.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But patent protection of pharmaceuticals were re-introduced after the 2005 amendment to\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">comply with TRIPS.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What are the issues USTR has with the Indian Patent Regime?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the main points of contention between India and the U.S. has been Article 3(d) of\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Indian Patent Act. This point is also brought up as an area of concern in both USTR <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">reports mentioned here.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Section 3<\/strong> deals with what does not qualify as an invention under the Act. Similarly, <strong>Section 3(d)<\/strong> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">does not allow patents to be granted to inventions involving new forms of a known substance unless it differs significantly in properties with regard to efficacy. Hence, Section 3(d) basically prevents what is known as the \u201cevergreening\u201d of patents.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Validity of Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Act<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court in the case <strong>Novartis vs. The Union of India<\/strong> upheld the validity of section 3(d).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The judgment also says that the section complies with the TRIPS agreement and the Doha Declaration.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What is the Doha Declaration?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health was adopted on November 14, 2021 by the WTO member states.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This declaration recognises the gravity of public health problems affecting developing and least developed nations.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It says that the TRIPS agreement does not and should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These measures include the right to grant compulsory licenses and the grounds for such licenses, the right to determine what constitutes a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency. This includes public health crises and the right to establish its own regime for the exhaustion of intellectual property rights.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The post is based on the article<\/span><b> \u201cExplained | The Indian patent regime and its clash with the U.S. norms\u201d<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> published in <\/span><b>The Hindu <\/b>on<b> 10th June 2022.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the News? The U.S Trade Representative(USTR) has released Special 301 Report 2022. The report has said that India was one of the most challenging major economies as far as IP protection and enforcement is concerned.\u00a0 The report retains India on its Priority Watch List along with six other countries- Argentina, Chile, China, Indonesia,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/explained-the-indian-patent-regime-and-its-clash-with-the-u-s-norms\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Explained | The Indian patent regime and its clash with the U.S. norms<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,1738,9],"tags":[10498],"class_list":["post-189828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-science-and-technology-daily-factly-articles","category-public","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}