This point is driven home rather powerfully by Advocate NB Zaveri in his book `Patents for Medicine'. Zaveri's lucid, near-text-book style presentation dwells at length on the adverse implications of adopting product patents at mere face value.

The author says, "Any principle or standard relating to intellectual property rights should be carefully tested against the touchstone of the socio-economic, developmental, technological and public interest needs of developing countries."

`Patents for Medicine', with its detailed presentation of price data, actually makes one sit up and wonder whether product patents would actually see huge forex inflows, an oft-dangled carrot.

The author substantiates its claims with an example of the poor state of Pakistan's healthcare industry and abandoned investment plans worth $37 million there by 25 multinationals. These MNCs gave cited falling profitability levels for their decision.

Pakistan's outcry against alleged transfer pricing strategies adopted by MNCs is worth noting. In some cases, "overcharge" for raw material imports is as high as 4000 per cent above world market rates, the author points out.The book touches on the practical administrative problems of adopting TRIPs lock, stock and barrel, given that India lacks the basic infrastructure to usher in product patents.

The Indian patent offices lack sufficient funds, storage facilities, manpower etc.

In an interesting example, Zaveri says that (in the area of biotechnology) even the sophisticated US patent office had, at one time, over 350 gene patent applications claiming over 500,000 sequences pending. "The PTO estimates that it would take one patent examiner 200 years to initially examine these applications and it would take the entire biotech group of 200 examiners a full year at a cost of $34 million." So, can India afford to take such a dear, far-reaching decision on product patents so lightly?

However, biotech patenting itself is a topic of great debate and several nations have adopted a wait and watch approach on the subject.

Zaveri suggests that India should be in no great hurry to introduce this in her patent laws. Moreso, TRIPs itself does not define the scope of the micro-organism.

`Patents for Medicine' then offers a comprehensive package of solutions while talking on product patents in the Indian context.

Zaveri's solutions cover even aspects of allowing developing nations to "set a duration" for patent coverage at a level significantly lower than that of the industrialised countries as per "their own developmental, technical and public interest needs."

Stressing on the need to strike the right balance between the private monopoly interests of the patent owner and the larger interest of the society, Zaveri suggests that the government of a particular country should be allowed to "work and use the patented invention in the country" if it so requires under special circumstances like national security, food production, poverty alleviation etc.

The detailed yet simplistic presentation of the facts and well-researched data will certainly go a long way in dispelling the myths of a golden product patent era. Product patents will, obviously, come with a set of its own problems.