EDITORIALS

From 50 Years Ago

Vol XVII, No 4, january 23, 1965

EDITORIALS

No Room for Product Patents

One of the principal issues on which the controversy over patents law in India has come to be
centred is whether in the field of chemical products, food articles and drugs and pharmaceutical
products should be made unpatentable and patents should be restricted to processes. The justification for such a change in law is that whereas a
product patent gives the patentee the monopoly
of that product, under a system of process patents
the same product could be manufactured by different patentees using different processes. In his
Report on the Revision of the Patents Law submitted to the Government of India in 1959 Justice
N Rajagopala Ayyangar recorded that: the denial
of product claims is necessary in order that such
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

january 24, 2015

important articles of daily use as medicine or

food which are vital to the health of the community should be made available to every one at
reasonable prices and that no monopoly should be
granted in respect of such articles. It is considered
that the refusal of product patents would enlarge
the area of competition and thus result in the
production of these articles in sufficient quantity
and at the lowest possible cost to the public.
In the current controversy those who want the
patents law to be left as it is, mainly the international drug companies and their Indian spokesmen, have made an attempt to confuse the issue
by contending that under the existing patent
system in the country patent claims for chemical
products, including drugs and pharmaceuticals,
can be sustained only when these products are
manufactured by the process described in the
patent specification. Following from this, it has
been argued, any number of manufacturers can
make the same product using different processes.
This seemingly convincing claim is, in fact, highly
misleading and needs to be refuted...
vol l no 4

In any case, there is enough evidence to show

that the present patent system in this country has
worked no better, from the point of view of
encouraging competitive research and manufacture, than a product patent system. The need
to amend the law is, therefore, incontestable.
According to reports, the amendments to the
Patents Act which the Government is expected to
move in the coming session of Parliament will
seek to reduce the term of patents, put a ceiling
on royalty rates and make the provision for compulsory licensing more effective. While these
changes are necessary and have been long overdue, they will lose much of their impact unless
the award of patents in the field of chemical
products, food articles and drugs and pharmaceuticals is restricted to processes. If the objective of reducing the monopolistic consequences
of patents is to be achieved, it should be explicitly
laid down that the patentees exclusive claim will
be limited to the process that he actually uses,
leaving others free to manufacture the product
by other processes.