Intervention by India on Agenda item 8 on future work at SCP/22
(July 31, 2015)

Madam Chair,

Thanks for giving us the floor. The Delegation of India has studied the final proposal put forward by the Chair for future work. We understand the challenge of maintaining a delicate balance, which you and the WIPO Secretariat have to face,not to forget our hardworking regional coordinators,  for keeping all the concerns of the member countries. We would like to complement you and the Secretariat for skilfully handling this challenge.

As  mentioned in the document very clearly, we appreciate that the future work of Committee would be confined to fact-finding and not lead to harmonization.

Coming to the specific proposal for future work, we would have ideally liked to have the followings, to be part of the future work:

One - a sharing session on the 'Sufficiency of Disclosure' should also be considered under the Quality of Patents because there are the only two studies which have been discussed in the SCP/22, namely inventive step &sufficiency of disclosure. The logic of including the sharing session on theinventivestep, also applies to the sufficiency of disclosure.

Two - the Delegation of India, desires to have continuation of the study on International Non-proprietary Name(INN), because we have been persistently raising our concerns on certain elements in the said study- document number SCP/21/9, which need further amendments.

Three - the Delegation of India wanted a study on the Markus Formulae and the impediments created by them towards affordability of essential medicines in DCs&  LDCs thereby adversely affecting access to the public health care.

Four - we also wanted a study in place of just a discussion on the issue of transfer of technology vis-à-vis sufficiency of disclosure.

Finally, we would liked to discontinue the issue of client-attorney privilege, because this issue is of substantive nature and could be governed by applicable national law of respective membercountries.

Having said that, we are aware that member countries have their own strong positions on specific issues mention in this document and India has expressed its concerns in no unclear terms, but keeping in mind the spirit of multilateralism and building a constructive consensus among the member countries for the continuous engagement in the Committee, India would be comfortable with the proposal by the Chair.

It is our hope that other members will show the desirable flexibility and reciprocate our gesture so that we all can arrive at a concrete proposal for the 23rd session.

Thank you once again , Madam Chair.

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