Mashelkar report runs into fresh controversy

The Mashelkar Committee report on patent laws, which was re-drafted recently to rectify certain controversial 'technical errors', has run into trouble again.

Carlos M Correa of Brazil, a patent expert of international repute whose views have been widely quoted by the Mashelkar committee to support its conclusions, has complained of 'misinterpretation' of some quotes from a published article titled 'Integrating Public Health Concerns into Patent Legislation in Developing Countries'.

Two years ago, R A Mashelkar, former chief of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, who headed the panel, withdrew the report after some portions of it were found to be copied from one of the submissions made by a UK-based researcher. The 'technical errors' were later rectified and the government had recently approved the report.

The current allegation turns serious because the Mashelkar panel had included Correa's quotes to establish that under World Trade Organisation's TRIPS agreement, India will not have the right to limit the granting of patents for pharmaceutical substances to strictly new medicines.

Correa, in an email response to Business Standard. said the the Mashelkar committee had misinterpreted the text quoted from his study to convey a meaning that he had not suggested.

In other words, while Mashelkar committee says India is obliged under WTO rules to extend patent protection to incremental changes made to known medicines (that have significant therapeutic benefits), Correa feels that a WTO member-country has the flexibility to prevent patent protection to incremental innovations in pharmaceuticals that are non-inventive but the result of routine experimentation and known techniques.

Mashelkar was not available for comment.

The Mashelkar committee, formed after the government passed the Patent Bill in Parliament in 2005, was assigned to see if parliamentarians' demand for a tightening of patent laws complied with India's obligations under the WTO agreement.

Correa, as the Mashelkar committee notes, is a "well-known international authority on intellectual property rights and its role in development".

He is a senior professor and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Industrial Property Law and Economics of the University of Buenos Aires.