[15/10/2015 Update: As reported by LiveMint — DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant clarifies that this is not the final policy, only the final draft as submitted by the IP Think Tank. He says that the Government will make the final policy and it’ll be announced in 30-45 days. Presumably this means that internally comments are being made on the final think tank draft. It’ll be interesting to see what changes are made by the Government on this final draft by the Think Tank]
The “Dont Trade Our Lives Away” blog brings us news that the final draft of India’s National IP Policy has been leaked! This is the link they’ve provided: India’s National IP Policy – leaked final draft.
Readers may remember our various posts on this issue including my post titled ‘Who Makes It (National IP Policy) in India? and Shamnad’s post: “Indian IP Policy: Two Tongued?“. I haven’t had time to read the final draft yet but we will bring you detailed comments on it soon. However, as pointed out by the Don’t Trade Our Lives Away blog, there are concerns such as the recommendation of specialised patent courts and a Task Force for enforcement. On the positive side, it does say that “any attempt to treat generics as counterfeit should be resisted and explicitly excludes pharmaceuticals from being granted low-barrier utility models. Reaffirming India’s will to continue using flexibilities under the TRIPS agreement, the policy also does not recognize TRIPS plus provisions such as patent linkage.”
A detailed post will follow soon. In the mean time, if any readers have any comments, please do send them in.
I would like you to write an article on “Preparedness of Indian Entities to Handle Their IP Obligations” after carrying out detailed search on the subject.
Hi Swaraj,
Are you sure this is the final policy? It doesn’t say much apart from generic statements like ‘we should all be nice people and do nice things’.
Regards,
Prashant
We’ve received this comment via email from D.G. Shah, Secy Gen of Indian Pharma Alliance:
“The “leaked” document is not the draft of India’s National IP Policy. It is the final report of The IPR Think Tank submitted by Justice Prabha Sridevan in April 2015, after stakeholder comments. The final report is worrisome as it opens for discussion issues that have already been settled and closed.
The final report was further modified (?) by the DIPP before forwarding it to the concerned ministries for their comments. The DIPP prepared a Cabinet Note, incorporating/rejecting various ministries’ comments with justification for inclusion/exclusion. It is now pending before the Union Cabinet for approval.
“DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant spoke about this when he said that a New IPR Policy will be announced in two months.
We do not know what is that Policy.”
This is in line with the update received today by Live Mint:
“A leaked version of the final draft of the national intellectual property rights (IPR) policy, which was put up by bloggers on the Internet on Tuesday, is only an input into the IPR policy drafted by the government, said industry secretary Amitabh Kant on Wednesday.
“The think-tank’s report is only an input. We sent it to various departments for comments. Policy is not made by the think-tanks, it is made by the government,” he said, adding that the final policy will be in place in next 30 to 45 days. ”
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/hFpH9YGm7HnlR01AhXj5PI/Leaked-draft-only-an-input-to-national-IPR-policy-Amitabh-K.html
The leaked draft doesn’t have the structure of a Policy; It is a just a report, though it is titled POLICY. A policy document is meant to state unequivocally, the position of a Government in issues and strategies of national interest, setting out reasons for taking such a stand/position. A policy document should be crisp also.
Science and Technology Policy, 2003 of Government of India had an ideal structure (http://dst.gov.in/stsysindia/stp2003.htm), while Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, 2013 is not as ideal as 2003 policy(http://www.goachamber.org/html/downloads/Govt/GIsti-policy-january-2013.pdf
Another example for a good policy draft is Intellectual Property Rights Policy for Kerala 2008 (http://documents.gov.in/KL/12768.pdf), though it emphasizes on Traditional Knowledge protection only.
It seems that the Think-Tank consisted of persons having no Experience in policy research. It is time for Parliamentarians and IPR Experts to intervene and ensure that India gets a good policy document.
There is some relaxation that Government clarifies leaked draft is only an input to national IPR policy: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/national-ipr-policy-will-soon-go-for-cabinet-approval-nirmala-sitharaman/articleshow/49386064.cms