Industry leaders from organisations like the OPPI, IMC, Assocham, Association of Biotech Led Enterprises (ABLE) and PhRMA called upon the Union government to act fast and implement tight and globally compliant intellectual property rights (IPR) norms at the earliest. Speaking at a conference, “India: The new emerging R&D hub for knowledge-based industries” in Mumbai yesterday they asserted that India should be able to take the benefits of advanced drug research in future only if tight IPR laws are implemented

According to well-known patent lawyer Krishna Sharma, a delay in implementation of product patent regime by a year and a half would be possible from the current deadline of December 31, 2005. “The third amendment of the patent bill would be tabled in December. However, the finalization of the bill will be decided by the new members of the joint parliamentary committee after the 2004 parliamentary elections. There would be new remarks, additions, and deletions from this new committee. Also there would be a line of litigations against it. All these would naturally delay the finalisation of the product patent regime,” she said.

N.M. Dhuldoya, past president of Assocham asserted on the need for a government to frame a policy on technology, set up a biotech development fund, adopt the usage biofertilisers and pesticides, encourage functional genomics, and implement management system for knowledge.

Shailesh Harbhakti, president, IMC called on the government to do study on demographics, encourage courses on specific topics like biotechnology, genetic engineering by moving away from the traditional BA, B Com and B Sc courses, implement better governance strategies like the adoption of single window clearance, and adopt laws that facilitate the convergence of science, engineering, biotechnology and IT.

G.S. Gill, principal secretary, Medical Education, Maharashtra, threw light on the benefits that our hospitals and medical fraternity would enjoy once clinical trials is facilitated in public hospitals. “The hospitals under me alone treat 12,000 inpatients and 1.5 million outpatients everyday. About 1,500 highly qualified doctors work in these hospitals. Likewise there are a number of institutions and faculty in this country, suggesting no dearth of intellectual capital in the country,” he said.

Dr. Venkateswarlu, deputy drugs controller stressed the companies to step up partnership with institutions like CSIR, which 42 national labs under it for better discovery stage research.

The experts quoted several benefits to India after becoming IPR compliant. “By 2020, the west will be short of 45 million jobs. India is the country having the largest potential to fill these if it acts right,” said IMC’s Haribhakti.

Susan K. Finston, associate vice president, PhRMA, said, “15 per cent of the scientists trained in US are from India. There are signs of many of these scientists coming back to India. There are already venture capitalists knocking doors for an entry into Indian biotech sector. With good intellectual capital protection laws this can be essentially tapped,” she said. She also stressed the need towards a positive communication flow between patent office and the government. Mexico, Jordan, China and Singapore are some of the examples of countries that offer better linkages between the patent office and the government.

Ranjit Shahani, president, OPPI allayed the fears that the drug prices would shoot once patent is granted. In India, only 6 per cent of the total healthcare costs come from medicine compared to 15 per cent in advanced countries, he said. As against the general perception, in countries like Egypt, Jordan, Mexico and Argentina, the drug prices actually fell after product patent regime was introduced, asserted Shahani.