He made these remarks here recently while speaking on the occasion of the second day of the joint seminar on world intellectual property rights under the auspices of the World intellectual Property Organisation, Assocham and the union industry and health ministries.

Touchning on the controversial subject of patent to basmati rice by an American company, he said in the case of basmati it was a question of trademark dispute and not a patent dispute.

EPO examiner Feiler, however, agreed that there were so many disputes like the benefit sharing between nations and so on and all these had to be sorted out before the IPR norms take effect in a couple of years from now.

Earlier, inaugurating the three-day seminar on Wednesday, theunion minister for health and family welfare Dalit Ezhilmalai said there was an urgent need to protect traditional systems of medicines (TSMs) from bio-piracy and taking care of intellectual property rights.

Dalit Ezhilmalai, inaugurating the first-ever Asian regional seminar on intellectual property issues in TSMs, said as per the Trade Related Intellectual Property rights (TRIPs) agreement, anything which fell under the public domain, automatically became non-patentable. Thus, it would be serving as a caveat for providing protection from patents to existing TSMs. This was all the more urgent in view of certain recently granted patents by developed nations to both documented and undocumented knowledge available in some Asian countries, the minister said.

Certain of such patents lacked novelty and non-obviousness. Due to the non-availability of codified information to patent examiners in developed nations, patents had been granted. If all existing TSM knowledge is codified in transmittable form,repetition of such unfortunate incidence may be avoided, Dalit Ezhilmalai said.

Another area of concern was the adoption of methodologies/mechanism for protection of the existing knowledge banks in the field of TSM, Dalit Ezhilmalai said and added that what needed to be protected from piracy was not only the products of TSM but also the guiding philosophies, methods of treatment and process of manufacturing the products. The minister said in India about 70 per cent of the health care in rural areas was being provided through traditional systems.

The World Health Organisation and EPO were among those who presented papers in the seminar. Besides, representatives from various countries including China, Indonesia, Ghana, Bhutan, Mongolia, Iran, Korea, Fiji and Vietnam have come for participation in this three-day seminar.

Director of the Geneva-based Global Intellectual Property Issues Division Richard C Owens, who provided a global overview of the intellectual property rights scenario, said makingintellectual property rights patented was not an end in itself but the patent had to be made commercially viable also. He said at the root of protection of intellectual property rights was also the issue of bilateral protection of biodiversity between nations.

Pradeep Bhargava, joint secretary, department of Indian system of traditional medicine and homeopathy, who presided over the inauguration, said TSM had to be the basis for all research and development in the sector of medicines.

Assocham secretary-general EN Murthy said fundamental shifts in the economic landscape were rapidly making the current system of intellectual property unworkable and ineffective. The current regime of IPR was designed over a hundred years ago and hence the area was full of complications. Industry could take up research and development ventures to make it commercially viable, Murthy added.

Medical adviser of Dabur India CK Katiyar said as much as 90 per cent of patented items never got commercialised and so mere patentingwas not going to fulfil the objective. What was needed was to make the entire field economically viable for both the individual patent seeker and to the industry concerned.

Union horticulture commissioner SP Singh said patenting of intellectual property rights and medicinal plants and properties was still a grey area because if a plant were to be patented, first the owner of the property had to be decided. The question of who the owner of the plant came first. So, there were several tricky issues which had to be still sorted out.