Indian patent law on biotechnological inventions

摘要

The application of modern biotechnology to industry and agriculture is a recent development, less than thirty years old. The biotechnology revolution has just begun to touch lives in the developing world. Amongst developing countries India is one that has immense potential to utilize biotechnolgoy to its advantage to solve some of its most intractable problems of productivity, health and environment. Yet India's contribution so far to this area, in terms of basic research or commercial applications, has been marginal. NGO activists in India have generally sided with some activists in the industrialized world in opposing advancenments in biotechnology, more particularly in agricultural biotechnology. This opposition extends in particular to changing the intellectual property rights (IRPs) regime on biotechnological inventions -- the slogan is No Patents on Life. The current patent law in India dates back to the pre-biotechnolgoy era and does not explicitly recognize or exclude the patenting of biotechnological inventions. However, the Trad-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, to which India is a party as a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), requires some level of protection of biotechnoliogical inventions, including of plant varieties. India has to implement most of its TRIPS obligations by end of 1999 and is currently in the process of drafting revised legislation.