He was addressing the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) at its annual meeting in Geneva on Tuesday.Regarding the accusations that India was flouting product patents, the minister said that 70 per cent of modern medicines have been derived from floral species in India. Hence, the national policy on bio-diversity seeks to ensure benefits for India. It has been framed with the objective of strengthening conservation of bio-diversity, he said.

The government also wants to compensate local communities as they have a rich heritage of indigenous knowledge, both coded and formal, he said.Yielding some ground to multinationals respecting product knowledge sourced from India, the minister said that India has to strike a balancebetween the imperatives of indigenous property protection and the process of sustained and equitable development.

Pharma multinationals have had a long-standing complaint against India that as there is no product protection in India, they suffer in the Indian market. India has argued that in order to provide cheap medicines to its poor, it can only offer process patents to the West.

India has now taken the stance that multinational drug companies who have patented formulations on the strength of knowledge derived from India cannot complain too much about product patent violation.

The minister said that the government is in the process of modernising patent offices through a project estimated to cost $18 million. The plan for modernisation and restructuring patent offices in India has assumed urgency as India has decided to accede to the Paris Convention and the Patent Cooperation Treaty, he said.

India wants to be designated as International Survey Authority and International Preliminary ExaminingAuthority, he said. The minimum requirement to qualify for such a designation has been incorporated in the modernisation plan, he added.

Post-liberalisation, filing of trade mark applications has doubled and that of patents increased, he said.