The revised committee report reiterates the same conclusions as the earlier report submitted at the fag end of 2006, albeit with more strong reasoning to back up its conclusions.
In short, the Committee notes, and rightly so, that any attempt to exclude an entire class of inventions i.e. incremental pharmaceutical inventions would violate the mandate under Article 27 of TRIPS to grant patents to all inventions in all fields of technology.
For those interested, please see the patent office website, where this revised report is snugged away in a quiet corner titled “Revised Report of the Technical Expert Group on Patent Law Issues”.
For those interested in this saga which captured national media attention in 2007, see these extensive posts on SpicyIP.
History of the Mashelkar Committee Report
Explaining the reasons behind the withdrawing of the earlier report and its current resubmission, the revised report states:
“The Report was submitted by the TEG (technical expert group) to the Government on 29 December 2006. It was subsequently noted that there were some ‘technical inaccuracies’ in the Report. The Chairman wrote a letter dated 19th February 2007 to seek Government’s approval to ‘’withdraw the Report, re-examine it and resubmit a Report, which meets with the requirements of the highest standards’’. The Government, vide D.O. Letter No.12/14/2005-IPR III on 7th of March 2007 accepted this request.
Subsequently, due to certain developments, the Chairman of the Committee expressed his desire to resign from the Chairmanship of the TEG vide letter dated 15th of March 2007. The Government, however, did not accept this request of resignation vide D.O. letter No.12/14/2—5-IPR II dated 1st May 2007 and requested the TEG to submit the Report incorporating the changes.
Further communications followed, and most recently, the same decision was communicated by the Government vide D.O. letter No.12/14/2005 – IPR III of 10th February 2009, and the TEG was requested to expedite and submit the Report at the earliest. Vide letter dated 9th March 2009, the Chairman, while respecting the decision by the Government, agreed to accept his responsibility as the Chairman again and to submit the Report. Accordingly, the Report, incorporating the changes, has been resubmitted.”
Key Conclusions of Revised Report
The report concludes as below:
“The Technical Expert Group (TEG) concludes that it would not be TRIPS compliant to limit granting of patents for pharmaceutical substance to New Chemical Entities only, since it prima facie amounts to a “statutory exclusion of a field of technology”. However, every effort must be made to provide drugs at affordable prices to the people of India. Further, every effort should be made to prevent the grant of frivolous patents and ‘ever-greening’. Detailed Guidelines should be formulated and rigorously used by the Indian Patent Office for examining the patent applications in the pharmaceutical sector so that the remotest possibility of granting frivolous patents is eliminated.”
Apart from the above, the main highlights of the technical expert group (TEG) are outlined right at the start of the report in a couple of paragraphs as below:
Article 27 of TRIPS
The Committee notes, and rightly so, that any attempt to exclude an entire class of inventions i.e. incremental pharmaceutical inventions would violate the mandate under Article 27 of TRIPS to grant patents to all inventions in all fields of technology. As extracted from the report:
“4.1. Article 27 of TRIPS, which deals explicitly with the issue of patentability, inter alia, states that ‘Member States may not exclude any field of technology from patentability as a whole and they may not discriminate as to the fields of technology, the place of innovation’ etc.
Reading this obligation in the light of the overall purpose of the Agreement, it appears that linking the grant of patents for pharmaceutical substances only to a new chemical entity or to a new medical entity may prima facie amount to ‘excluding a field of technology’, even when they satisfy the basic requirements of patentability’. In such a situation, TEG concludes that it is possible to hold the provision as being not TRIPS Compatible.”
Doha Declaration and Article 7/8 of TRIPS
The Committee notes that neither the Doha Declaration on Public Health nor Articles 7 and 8 can detract from the above conclusion that an outright exclusion of incremental inventions from patentability would violate TRIPS. As extracted from the report:
“4.2. The TEG carefully examined the flexibilities allowed under the TRIPS Agreement to the member states (especially Articles 7 & 8) and also as a consequence of the Doha Declaration.
The detailed analysis and reassessing provided in the Report has led TEG to conclude that it is debatable as to whether national interest or the flexibility allowed under the Agreement to Member States would be accommodated by such ‘statutory exclusion’ of an entire class of inventions.”
Preventing Evergreening
The report then goes on to reiterate that its point that including patents from non NCE’s does not necessarily amount to “evergreeing” and that the patent office has now enough tools to prevent this.
“4.3. Every effort must be made to prevent the practice of ‘ever greening’ often used by some of the pharma companies to unreasonably extend the life of the patent by making claims based sometimes on ‘trivial’ changes to the original patented product. The Indian patent office has the full authority under law and practice to determine what is patentable and what would constitute only a trivial change with no significant additional improvements or inventive steps involving benefits. Such authority should be used to prevent ‘evergreening’, rather than to introduce an arguable concept in the light of 4.1 and 4.2 above of “statutory exclusion” of incremental innovations from the scope of patentability.”
Encouraging Incremental Innovation
The TEG also stresses on the importance of using the patent stystem to incentivise more incremental innovation.
“4.4 The process of innovation is continuous and progressive leading to an ever extending chain of knowledge. Innovative incremental improvements based on existing knowledge and existing products is a ‘norm’ rather than an ‘exception’ in the process of innovation. Entirely new chemical structures with new mechanisms of action are a rarity rather than a rule. Therefore, “incremental innovations” involving new forms, analogs, etc. but which have significantly better safety and efficacy standards, need to be encouraged. What is important, however, is for the patent office to be vigilant about setting high standards of judging such innovations so that efforts on “evergreening” are scrupulously prevented.
Section 3(d) Examination
It was rather unfortunate that both Novartis as well as critics of the earlier report by the TEG misguided the public by stressing that the Mashelkar Committee had opined that section 3(d) violated TRIPS. I attempted to counter this false propaganda several times on this blog by noting that:
“…the Mashelkar Committee Report was not asked to review section 3(d) or in fact, any section under the current patents act. And in all fairness to the Committee, it did no such thing. It was asked to only review two prospective provisions that were sought to be introduced, but held back since the government apprehended that it wouldn’t comply with TRIPS. One of these prospective provisions relates to the controversial “New Chemical Entity” debate and asks:
“Whether it would be TRIPS compatible to limit the grant of patents for pharmaceutical substances to new chemical entities?”
Those of you familiar with pharmaceutical technology will appreciate that new chemical entities are very difficult to come by and in some ways are comparable with “pioneer” inventions in other technology areas. All the other inventions that follow might in some sense be “incremental” as they attempt to build on this pioneer invention/technology. Thus for example, a new cancer drug might be based on a patented “new chemical entity”. CIPLA comes up with a new form of this old drug that is much more effective—i.e. you have less side effects whilst taking the new form by CIPLA. Should CIPLA get a patent on this improvement or this incremental innovation? This is precisely what this referral addresses. If the grant of patents is limited to new chemical entities alone, then CIPLA does not get a patent, despite the fact that it has come up with a “new” and “non obvious” invention, that also has an “increased efficacy” under section 3(d). In fact, if such a prospective section limiting the grant of patents to “new chemical entities” were to be introduced in the law, section 3(d) would be rendered redundant i.e. even if the new form by CIPLA has increased efficacy, it would still not merit protection.
In short, the two issues (the NCE query which the Committee addressed AND the TRIPS compatibility of section 3(d)) are really separate ones and ought not to be conflated.”
Thankfully the committee has made clear in its revised report that its report has nothing to do with section 3(d)! It notes:
“4.5 The TEG was not mandated to examine the TRIPS compatibility of Section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act or any other existing provision in the same Act. Therefore, the committee has not engaged itself with these issues.”
Patenting of Micro-organisms
In its earlier report, the committee concluded that excluding micro-organisms from patentability would contravene TRIPS. It reiterates the same conclusion in the revised report, albeit with better reasoning and better language this time.
IPI Report and the Alleged “Plagiarism”
In my report to the Mashelkar Committee, commissioned by the Intellectual Property Institute (IPI), I had concluded as below:
” Limiting the grant of patents to NCEs/NMEs and thereby excluding other categories of pharmaceutical inventions (the ‘proposed exclusion’) is likely to contravene the mandate under Article 27 of TRIPS to grant of patents to all ‘inventions’. Neither Articles 7 and 8 nor the Doha Declaration can be used to derogate from this specific mandate under Article 27.
2. The proposed exclusion amounts to an ‘unjustified differentially disadvantageous treatment’ of pharmaceutical inventions and is therefore likely to violate the ‘non discrimination’ mandate under Article 27.
3. If the aim of the proposed exclusion is to prevent a phenomenon loosely referred to as ‘ever-greening’, this can be done by a proper application of patentability criteria, as present in the current patent regime.
4. Lastly, it is important to distinguish the phenomenon of ‘ever-greening’ from what is commonly referred to as ‘incremental innovation’. While ‘ever-greening’ refers to an undue extension of a patent monopoly, achieved by executing trivial and insignificant changes to an already existing patented product, ‘incremental innovations’ are sequential developments that build on the original patented product and may be of tremendous value in a country like India.”
While the Mashelkar Committee agreed with my conclusions above in its initial report, it did not provide much way of reasoning. I had noted in an earlier post that :
“What worried me, however, is that while it took me about 35 pages to come to the conclusion that keeping non NCEs or incremental pharmaceutical inventions outside the scope of patentability would contravene Article 27 of TRIPS, the Committee disposed of this issue in a couple of paragraphs.”
The revised report does a lot more in terms of substantiating its conclusions.
Many critics who were keen on rubbishing the Mashelkar Committee report vehemently argued that the report plagiarised form my IPI report. Here again, I attempted to counter this false suggestion by noting that:
“I first deal with their charge of plagiarism, since I am the alleged “victim” here. They attempt to substantiate their claim of plagiarism by selectively quoting from my blog. They however omit the most critical part of my blog statement in this regard “To be fair to the Committee, they did include the crux of my submission in an Annex to their Report.”
In other words, the Committee did include my submission as an Annexure, as they did with every other submission (about 24 in all) that was made to them. It bears noting in this regard that the Committee received submissions from a variety of IP stakeholders including industry (Ranbaxy, Biocon, IPA, IDMA), civil society groups (ALF, MSF), law firms (Lex Orbis, K&S Partners), IP Associations (AIPPI) and even retired members of the judiciary (Justice Krishna Iyer). Those with the patience to read the entire report including the Annexures would have gathered that some of the Committee’s observations were borrowed from my report to them. This being so, qualifying their borrowing of some of my conclusions as “plagiarism” is incorrect.”
Conclusion
The analysis of the Committee in the revised report remains similar to the old report, although there has been an attempt to strengthen the conclusions.
The revised report rightly concludes that any outright exclusion of an entire class of inventions (non NCE’s) would violate Article 27 of TRIPS.
It also rightly notes that the current version of the Indian patents act, through section 3.d and other provisons provides a robust enough mechanism to help prevent evergreening.
If one takes stock of the huge number of patent office oppositions in the recent past that denied patent rights to many pharma patent application (many of them excluded under section 3.d), one will see the force of this logic. Some of these recent rejections are listed below:
1. Pfizer’s Applications Claiming Caduet (rejected pursuant to a PreGrant Opposition filed by Torrent Pharma)
2. Novartis’ application claiming the alpha crystalline form of imatinib mesylate (oppn filed by Sun Pharma and Okasa)
3. Glaxo’s Application for Rosiglitazone Salt
4. Gilead’s application for the Tamiflu drug (Oseltamavir): Pursuant to pre-grant oppn filed by Cipla. In particular, I would recommend our readers to this extremely well reasoned decision of Dr Kardam that goes into some 50 odd pages!
Most of these decisions can be found on the website of the Indian Patent Office. We had also blogged on some earlier decisions that denied patents to weak applications. See in particular this rejection of BI’s patent over Nevirapine. For a more detailed post on the Nevirapine rejection, see here.
Anyone reading these decisions will appreciate that the standards under the Indian patent act are fairly rigorous and do not permit of frivolous patents. As to whether or not these standards are in fact being applied rigorously by the patent office is another issue altogether. Having said this, it is important to appreciate that any lapse in scrutiny by the patent office can always be offset through an effective deployment of the opposition machinery (which is perhaps the most potent machinery anywhere in the world) and/or a resort to courts and the specialised IP tribunal (IPAB) by way of appeal.
Dear Shamnad,
Thanks for bringing this report to light…
Would like to know according to u the difference between so called “ever-greening” and the much talked about ‘incremental innovation’ in this report?
Does a patent application for a salt form of an existing compound having better solubility and hence bio-availability, be treated as “ever-greening” or an “incremental innovation”?
OR
A patent application for a new polymorphic form of an existing compound having better stability and other physico-chemical property be classified under which category?
And finally, what does “increased efficacy” according to s. 3(d) imply? Does it mean that every incremental innovation needs to be supported by yet another costly clinical trials?
Can’t some things be expected to be based on logic, so that eventually the final cost is minimized?
Would appreciate your thoughts on this!!!
Shamnad,
I would surely be happy if you could acknowledge Patent Circle for Caduet and Oseltamivir pregrant oppositions as wellas Glaxo’s rosigltiazone salt decision. Apart from our blog these info is not available anywhere.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous,
No idea who you are but sole purpose of putting watermark is to distinguish the source if someone download the decision from our blog obviously not to claim ownership. If you have any problem with that then who is asking you to refer and download from our blog (feel free to surf around patent office website). Indeed decisions are available on official website of patent office but why it was still not reported anywhere in media or news even after 15 days of decision made available on official website. Simple nobody knows about the decision even the companies involved in opposition proceedings. In fact, it was our blog that keep monitoring and retrieving such decisions to bring them in notice of our readers. There are more than 15 decisions listed in February and March 2009 but we decided only to cite five of them and incidentally SpicyIP referred those decisions only (except Pegasys) and sufficient to understand that author has referred those decisions from our blog only. Is it wrong to ask author to acknowledge our blog for such info? Yes if you do not feel respecting and acknowledging someone time and effort for bringing such valuable information in public then we have no point of discussion here.
@Shamnad
We always have great respect for you, both personally and professionally, and your contribution to IP awareness. As you referred in past that you moderate comments made to your blog. We sincerely expect such professionalism at least from you that any comment making personal remarks specific to someone using words like “selfish” and “mean” should be avoided from being posted in public.
Dear Anon,
Thanks very much for your interesting perspective on section 3(d) and the sheer difficulty of assessing when an allegedly new invention is an ever-greened variety, as opposed to something that encapsulates an incremental invention.
I’m not sure I have the right answer in this regard, but hopefully section 3.d itself should help us strike the distinction. As to whether increased bio-availability etc should be patentable under section 3(d): please read our extensive paper in this regard.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1086254
I hope this helps somewhat.
Shamnad
Dear Varun,
I’m not entirely sure where your angst stems from. Are you claiming a monopoly over all patent office decision reporting? Or that none of us have the expertise to follow patent office developments independently, without going through your blog.
I am a great fan of your blog, but I do independently follow patent office developments as well–and have been doing so for the last several years.
All of these decisions are available on the patent office site. The cases selected were the ones that this blog has been tracking anyway. In my last post on the Kurian effect, I even referenced some of our earlier posts in relation to Caduet. And 2 articles on the tamiflu patents, which I’d been tracking.
See this post here: http://spicyipindia.blogspot.com/2009/04/kurian-effect-increased-efficiency-at.html
As for the alpha crystalline patent of Novartis, I’m not sure if you know–but Joe Mathews of BS broke this news.
And also take a look at DWS site, which reports on all these cases and provides some decent analysis–just to help you ward off the misconception that you are the only one following patent developments in India.
See http://www.dancewithshadows.com/pillscribe/india-rejects-patents-for-pfizers-caduet-gsks-rosiglitazone-salt/
Apart from the above post which covers Rosiglitazone, I had independent access to its decision, As you know has been mired in some very deep litigation which we reported on the blog–and friends of mine that deal with this case keep me appraised of all the developments re: this patent and other related patents of GSK.
In any case, I’m not sure I owe you an explanation at all in this regard…for this is all public domain material and you don’t have a monopoly over this information.
And just so that you read me loud and clear: my patent related knowledge or information does not come from your blog. And whenever it does originate from your blog, we have always acknowledged it. But where it hasn’t, we don’t see the need to, just because you were the first to borrow these cases from freely available public domain material.
Thanks Shamnad for your reply. I think I made it quite clear in my earlier comment that I am not claiming any ownership over the decisions. We are asking for acknowledgment that those decisions first reported by our blog (the way we used to report granted patents which are also available on patent office website). And who doubts your ability to track such developments? Yes you may be tracking Caduet and Tamiflu cases but may still not knowing that pre-grant oppositions already decided (in fact company involved in Caduet pregrant opposition was not aware that the decision is made in their favor). As far as DWS news is concerned, they too borrowed info from our blog (you may check that also). Obviously I do not claim ownership on publicly available material. Anyhow good you track such decisions on your own. Congrats! Importantly there were two more important pre-grant opposition decisions made available in March 2009 which still not reported – strange!!!
But still i would sincerely appreciate if you can remove Anonymous comment making personal remark on me.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dear Shamnad/ Varun,
I had an off line debate with Varun some months earlier on watermarking and he had given the same reasoning that he has quoted here.
I per se don’t have a problem with the marking but do have a problem with asserting that SpicyIP would have got the decision only from Patent circle.
I must give SpicyIP the benefit of doubt here simply because Shamnad has been clear in acknowledging my blog, whenever he got the information from there, as also acknowledging Patentcircle too, when he got information from PC.
I know – both Shamnad / Varun are extremely well networked and get their information independently.
VC, don’t be so annoyed… I am sure that SpicyIP procured the decision independently.
I hope that you bloggers can put this all behind us [and not stop blogging – VC].
Sincerely hoping for a smooth move,
GenericIPguy
Dear Shamnad
Mr. Varun Chhonkar has stopped blogging (Patent Circle), hurt from the comments of Mr. Anonymous, definitely not me.
I have posted a reply to Mr.VC on his blog but am not sure whether it would be made available, so I am reproducing it here.
Dear VC
It is unfortunate that we won’t be having Patent Circle in future. Though I believe that your concern was well taken care of by the reply posted by Mr. Shamnad Basheer of SicyIP. I am reproducing it below:
“Dear Varun,
I’m not entirely sure where your angst stems from. Are you claiming a monopoly over all patent office decision reporting? Or that none of us have the expertise to follow patent office developments independently, without going through your blog.
I am a great fan of your blog, but I do independently follow patent office developments as well–and have been doing so for the last several years.
All of these decisions are available on the patent office site. The cases selected were the ones that this blog has been tracking anyway. In my last post on the Kurian effect, I even referenced some of our earlier posts in relation to Caduet. And 2 articles on the tamiflu patents, which I’d been tracking.
See this post here: http://spicyipindia.blogspot.com/2009/04/kurian-effect-increased-efficiency-at.html
As for the alpha crystalline patent of Novartis, I’m not sure if you know–but Joe Mathews of BS broke this news.
And also take a look at DWS site, which reports on all these cases and provides some decent analysis–just to help you ward off the misconception that you are the only one following patent developments in India.
See http://www.dancewithshadows.com/pillscribe/india-rejects-patents-for-pfizers-caduet-gsks-rosiglitazone-salt/
Apart from the above post which covers Rosiglitazone, I had independent access to its decision, As you know has been mired in some very deep litigation which we reported on the blog–and friends of mine that deal with this case keep me appraised of all the developments re: this patent and other related patents of GSK.
In any case, I’m not sure I owe you an explanation at all in this regard…for this is all public domain material and you don’t have a monopoly over this information.
And just so that you read me loud and clear: my patent related knowledge or information does not come from your blog. And whenever it does originate from your blog, we have always acknowledged it. But where it hasn’t, we don’t see the need to, just because you were the first to borrow these cases from freely available public domain material.”
I am not associated with any of the blogs(in the capacity of writer) but do follow many, including yours’ and Shamnad’s.
To make it more practical, I would like to refer to the postings of PatentDocs, another well read blog on Pharma and Biotech Patenting. Here you will find that links (direct links to pdf docs and not to any share website like box)are provided to redears, who can immediately download the entire document.
These documents are for the most of the times first available on Paid sites like LexisNexis etc. Still the writer has never (and I don’t see a reason to do it in future) quoted any of the paid sites for the availability of the documents.
The reason is simple, no matter what pain you took to make available to public, a document which was public, it will and should remain a public document without having a need to be given acknowlegdement for such “efforts and pain.”
Last but not the least, It is my humble request to all the bloggers to go for following the “Text of the GNU Free Documentation License” available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License. Only in this way can truly fulfill our objective of selfless service to our fellow readers.
Best of Luck!!!
Dear Anon,
Thanks for your views. I just looked up patent circle now and notice that Varun continues to take pot shots at SpicyIP and pretends that we are the reason he closes his blog.
He appears to be extremely agitated that someone called him “selfish”. I find it ridiculous that he asserts rights to public domain material and then cries like a sissy and closes his blog when he is called “selfish”. On this blog, we were called worse things than this–and yet we had the temerity to continue. Take the latest post on “IV and patent troll” posted by Prashant where we did not moderate a comment which called Prashant a “little baby that gets excited”. The reason being that the comment also had some substantive aspects which helped further the debate.
We only moderate comments that are purely adhominem or substantively so–that don’t engage with the merits at all. I personally think that when someone tries to lay claim to public domain material, the word “selfish” is very mild for them!! And in this case, the commentator clearly explained his reason for calling him “selfish”.
I spoke to someone who knows Varun reasonably well and it turns out he was planning to shut down his blog anyway. He’s just using this as an excuse–and what a perfect occasion for him to also further his agenda of denigrating SpicyIP by taking shots at it–he’s been doing for quite a while now.
This is a personal email that I wrote to him, which he hasn’t bothered responding to:
“Dear Varun,
The next time you have a personal issue re: attribution etc, please write to me directly rather than posting on the blog.
Like I said in the blog response, since I really didn’t rely on your blog for our post, I didn’t attribute you. My follow ups on the oppn came as a result of my tracking these cases and my knowledge of Kurian’s recent order –owing to which a number of decisions were going to come out in March/April.
Had you raised this issue in a nice way through a personal email, I might have included an attribution if that would have made you happy. But just grabbing public attention through commenting on the blog and attempting to show us in bad light when I really didn’t see the need to attribute you (for taking stuff out of the public domain) is what riled me. Which accounts for the rather harsh response I vented out to you.
I’m laying all of this down to help you appreciate where I am coming from –so that we can avoid issues such as this in future. I’ve had an extremely sour opinion of you after that parallel imports post, where you sent many of your flunkeys (or masqueraded yourself) to post some very disparaging comments about our blog. And yet I recommended you wholeheartedly to my friend Shwe Majumder for inclusion on her panel.
So either we work at making things better or we continue with the current misunderstandings and unnecessary statements and counter-statements.
Take care,
Shamnad”
Dear Shamnad,
Thanks for the post. Yeah, I also agree that, “He’s just using this as an excuse”. In his blog, replying to a fellow Sandeep, Varun says, “Thanks Sandeep. At least someone had fun reading our blog. Good to know that. Sure debates will continue … and also we will come back with new colors and better content.”
One can infer what coming back with new colors and better content means.
Anyways, I still feel that all of us who want AIM TO INCREASE TRANSPARENCY IN INDIAN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY POLICY/INSTITUTIONS and STAND FOR FAIR, OBJECTIVE AND ACCURATE REPORTING/REVIEW OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND INNOVATION POLICY NEWS FROM INDIA must enter free licensing. Anyone for any purpose whatsoever should be able to quote/refer/publish the contents of our blogs. It should be one’s courtesy to acknowledge one’s creation and an acknowledgement mustn’t be asked for.
Having said that, please refrain from personal attacks and though it is not required, blackout the words in dispute here.
This would only be your benevolence and let one not enjoy a reason to mask one’s already planned endeavors.
Regards and Best of Luck!!!
Dear Anon,
Thanks for your thoughtful response to this rather unfortunate incident involving behaviour that can only be characterised as sneaky and dishonest. But I will take your cue to dip into reservoirs of benevolence and take off the allegedly problematic comment. In order to satiate someone who has been consistently taking pot shots at our blog and attempting to denigrate it.
Thanks.
Dear Shamnad,
It seems the discussion seems to have gone is a different direction, and its weird that such a reason is used to stop blogging.
More importantly thanks for bringing this report to light.
Good Move. Chapter Closed!!!
Well its survival of the fittest. And Darwinism is a good thing to happen. Spares us from hard to belive analysis…
Apologies for missing out the Mashelkar Committee Report earlier. I am just wondering how come the report does not include perspectives of patent attorneys?
hi guys,
i wanted to inquire whether under Indian laws any government authority force foreign pharma company to divulge their trade secret regarding a derivative of interferon.
can in a joint venture agreement CSIR transfer all its ipr ownership to a foreign company?