Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations
Geneva
STATEMENT BY INDIA
Report of the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents(SCP) delivered by Shri Om Prakash Gupta, Head of IP Office of India on 4 October 2017
Mr President
India would like to reaffirm its position expressed on earlier occasions that patent monopoly rights are granted for the disclosure of inventions to the public and to foster innovation, industrial development and boost the national economy. The fundamental objective of Patent office should be rightful grants and improve the quality of Patent System as a whole which infuses the protection of public interest by filtering out frivolous patents.India also firmly believes that our objective is to ensure that the global intellectual property regimes encourage the innovation and promote transfer of technology by fully utilising the flexibilities provided under TRIPS.
India is of the view that quality of examination needs to be improved substantially in conformity with the national policy objective of a country so that high social cost of granting patents to insignificant improvements may be eliminated to greater extent.
We would like to state that Indian Patent Office has recently joined WIPO CASE which allows the access to search and examination reports of various countries and very soon India is going to become depositing office, which will facilitate access to Indian patent documents including search and examination. We are happy to inform you that India is going to sign cooperation agreement with WIPO tomorrow on 5th October 2017 which would enable access to such information. However, Indian delegation firmly believes that it should not be made mandatory and should be left to the individual members to take decision as per their national objectives.
On the issue of transfer of technology, India feels that there should be a balance of rights and obligations, and the protection of patent holder’s right should be based on technological content disclosed in patent specifications. Further, right holder should promote the transfer of technology at the earliest specially in the area of health to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote socio-economic and technological development.
We are of the view that ever-greening policies for patenting incremental innovations without substantial improvement would have adverse impact on delivery of healthcare services.
Indian delegation would like to recall that UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicines has specifically explored the policy incoherence between IP, trade and human rights and has made a number of recommendations in this regard. Some of these recommendations are specifically addressed to WIPO and are directly relevant to the subject of the sharing session on patents and health in the SCP. Delegation of India would like to see that the SCP discusses these recommendations.
With these words, thank you Mr. President.
