Intellectual Property Rights
Last month, the Indian Patents Office released the revised Guidelines for Computer Related Invention (CRI Guidelines), which has finally aligned the Patents Office fully with the Indian Patents Act. This is the third time that … Read more
A three-year old technology of gene editing called CRISPR is now the focus of two major disputes. The disputes are: who (or which team) will get the Nobel prize for this discovery, and the other, … Read more
Software patents are like zombies in the zombie film genre that Hollywood has made popular. They just refuse to die. As many time you kill them, they revive again and keep coming back. In India, … Read more
The government has chosen the occasion of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the US to articulate a vision on Intellectual Property (IP) protection that promises to radically reshape the Indian IP system (as reported in … Read more
The US-India Joint Statement signed during Modi’s visit to the US has opened the doors for two Indian laws that have been passed by the Indian Parliament. One is on patents – the Indian Patents … Read more
AMONG all the provisions of the WTO agreement, the one relating to Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has possibly been the most widely debated in the country. There are very good reasons why this … Read more
A few days back, the Health Minister of South Africa, Dr Motsoaledi, characterised an elaborate plot hatched by large multinational drug companies as “genocide” and a conspiracy of “satanic magnitude”. He was referring to public … Read more
TWO recent events show, once again, how the regulatory mechanisms that apply to medicines is deeply flawed and influenced by the industry. The first is the notification of ceiling prices for essential medicines by the … Read more
Angelina Jolie’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (May 14, 2013) stating why she had a double mastectomy (or breast removal) has created a media sensation across the world. Jolie is an icon and … Read more
The Supreme Court’s judgement throwing out Novartis’ attempts to secure a patent for the leukaemia drug Glivec has created a frenzy in the pink press – both in India and abroad. For them, one of … Read more
STRANGELY enough, the more lawyers a government has, the more poor are the draft laws it produces. Apart from the still continuing fiasco of the Lok Pal Bill, we have “The Protection and Utilisation of … Read more
AARON Swartz, an activist for free information, a precocious talent who had designed and developed a whole host of tools that we all use today, committed suicide on January 11. He was facing 35 years … Read more