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Product Patent Bill passes in Parliament - Communista support the Government to pass the bill with major amendments - bill headed for Upper House - Domestic companies win Multinationals lose
With the help of the Communists, the ruling coalition Government in India has succeeded in passing the Product Patent bill in the Parliament - the Lower House. It was a clear win fro the domestic companies while the Multinational Companies were dismayed.
The bill when enacted will allow continuance of the law under an ordinance issued on December 26 for complying with World Trade Organization agreement. If the bill is not enacted, it may invite retaliatory sanctions from World Trade Organization.
The Product Patent Law includes patents in pharmaceuticals, agri-products and embedded software. The whole things now depend on UPA Governments acceptability of Left Front demanded amendments. The Left parties had demanded 12 amendments, of which seven had been accepted and experts believe the rest will also be negotiated and finally accepted in some form. There is no chance for the bill to pass unless UPA coalition of current Indian Government receives full support from the left parties.
CPI-M leaders Rupchand Pal and Nilotpal Basu later admitted there were “substantive improvements” in discussions with the government and they were “inching close” to an agreement on some of the sticky points. The left parties have threatened that if Government does not accept their demanded changes, they will join NDA in defeating the bill.
said the leftwing parties had decided to support the bill as the Congress-led coalition had "accepted almost all our amendments".
Among the changes tabled by Kamal Nath, India's commerce minister, were the doubling of the period for appeals against a patent to six months, tighter rules on the type of new substances eligible for protection, and measures to facilitate the export of patented drugs to less developed countries under compulsory licences.
The final version of the bill has still to be approved by India's upper house.
World Health Organization and other Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) have pleaded to tone down the provisions of the bill to allow provision of low cost generic drug to poor in the world - especially HIV drugs.
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