Interventionon Exceptions and Limitations to Patent Rights at SCP/24

Madam Chair,

The Delegation of India reaffirms its supportfor the work proposed in document, SCP/19/6 by Brazil on exceptions and limitations to patent rights. Further, we restatethat the proposed study might focus upon the use of some exceptions like compulsory licensing, parallel imports, government uses, Bolar exceptions, etc., which are extremely important from the perspective of accessibility &affordability of medicinesand also in other areas of socioeconomic importance, namely the environment &technology in developing countries.

In this regards, we would like to recall the mandate, in Synthesis Report of the Secretary General of the United Nations, The Road to Dignity by 2030: On the Post-2015 Agenda, that:

“We must facilitate access to the benefits of technology for all, including the poorest, while ensuring that intellectual property regime creates the right incentives for the technological innovation needed for sustainable development. The urgency is particularly great in the case of low-carbon technologies as part of our efforts to mitigate human-induced climate change”.

Therefore, the mandate of our delegation is to ensure that the global IP regimes and the application of TRIPS flexibilities were fully consistent with and contributed to the goals of sustainabledevelopment. In order to protect the public interest, Articles 7 and 8 of the TRIPS Agreement allowed every Member State to enact the exceptions and limitations in its legislation.

The Delegation considers that, like any rights, patent rights could not be absolute and that they also carry the accompanying obligations that have to benefit public at large and further believes that those rights and obligations would balance out each other.

Having said that, the Delegation appreciates the painstaking work by theSecretariat in collecting the information on exceptions and limitations to patents rights, but at the same time, we reaffirm that it is time that such information to be properly analyzed to distil out thecontribution of exceptions and limitations to the development.
In this regard, we also suggest that since scientific and research institutescould be in a good place to use research exceptions and civil societies involved in publicprotection could be good sources of information regarding the use of exceptions, the Secretariatshould take into account the experience of those institutions in compiling such information.

Thank you, Madam Chair