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Vijay Simha
NEW DELHI, DEC 21: Like it did with the IRA Bill, the Congress today decided to make the BJP-led government sweat a bit more on the Patents Amendment Bill by putting off its final decision till a few minutes before Parliament convenes tomorrow. The government is hampered by the April deadline to keep up to the WTO agreement and the Congress is keen to push the BJP to the edge.
In a dramatic two-hour meeting this evening in Parliament, presided over by party president Sonia Gandhi, about 40-odd top Congress leaders let the pros and cons of the Bill fly around with Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Kapil Sibal making a strong case in support of the Bill. And Vyalar Ravi, Prithviraj Chauhan and Kamal Nath speaking against its current provisions.The result: Both the IRA and the Patents Bills have turned into political tools with the Congress and the BJP aiming to shove the responsibility of tackling the contentious issues on each other. However, while the IRA Bill can still wait, the Patents Bill is staringat the April 19, 1999 deadline.
If the Bill is not passed by then, the Congress has to back the BJP at some stage. Otherwise, India will be hit by trade sanctions from the US and Europe that will affect the country's export network.
This could eventually force the two parties to back the Patents Bill but with some amendments likely to be moved. Sonia said after this evening's meeting that the discussions were ``inconclusive''. The Congress Legislative Affairs Committee is now slated to meet again tomorrow at 9.45 a.m. and its decision will be conveyed to the BJP. Today's meeting only agreed on two basic issues: that the April 19, 1999 deadline has to be met and that the EMR regime was probably better than the Patent regime.
But for today, the dominant mood in the Congress was to make the BJP eat more humble pie. In the morning, the BJP put off the Patents Bill till tomorrow's Rajya Sabha session on the grounds that the Congress was meeting in the evening. This in turn went against the BJP when theCongress chose to make the BJP go through a tense night. Parleys are to take place till late at night within the Congress on what to decide tomorrow.
The divisions are on a) whether Exclusive Marketing Rights (EMRs), as envisaged in the Bill, are necessary; b) whether the Patent regime is worse than the EMR regime or vice-versa and c) whether the Patents Bill has enough EMR safeguards. That the stakes were high was evident even before the meeting with at least five separate notes making the rounds.
One was, curiously, sent by the Left parties which questioned every possible clause in the Bill. Called ``Stop EMRs'', this note was prepared by the Research Foundation for Science, technology and Ecology, an NGO with Left leanings. With this note were attached a briefing paper, again prepared by the same NGO, and a four-page paper by Vandana Shiva on ``Patent Laws and Biopiracy.'' The package was strong enough to provoke Pranab Mukherjee into a four-page ``response note'' where he rebutted every point raisedby the Left.
Adding to these were Vyalar Ravi's six-page note, a 21-page package of two papers by Kapil Sibal on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Prithviraj Chauhan's own note. In all, this made for a hefty amount of reading and arguments in the meeting.
The differences were then narrowed down to four issues. Clause 39 of the 1970 Patents Act which the current Bill proposes to delete. The original clause was that any person in India applying for a patent abroad has to get government clearance.
The Patents Amendment Bill seeks to do away with government intervention. No way, said Chauhan, Nath and Ravi. Let's see what we can come up with said Manmohan, Pranab and Sibal.
Chapter 4 of the original Act which gave the government right to examine all provisions of a patent application. This should be applicable to EMR applications too, argued the anti-Bill group. The Bill talks only of sale and distribution of a product under an EMR. We should have compulsory issue ofmanufacturing licences too, said the opponents. We'll look into it, said Manmohan and his supporters.
The last was the issue of pricing. Since the government can't possibly decide on what price imported stuff should sell at, the anti-Bill lobby felt some control must stay, maybe in the form of mandatory licensing.
All the heat is only till December 31, 2004. Some sort of via media to the WTO agreement has to be arrived at till then, either the EMR regime or the Petent regime. Nothing matters from January 1, 2005 when India becomes part of the WTO fully.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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