Livemint’s Unnikrishnan reported recently that there has been a move in the Council of TRIPS to ensure compulsory disclosure, by patent applicants, of the origin of genetic materials used in their inventions. SpicyIP in one of its earlier posts had mentioned that the Indian Biological Diversity Act requires that any patenting of genetic material in India be done only with the prior authorization of the National Biological Diversity Authority. Livemint quotes SpicyIP’s Shamnad Basheer saying that it is not quite…

When George Bush flew down to India in March ’06, he visited, my hometown, Hyderabad like his predecessor Clinton. However unlike Clinton who headed for Hi-Tech City, which is the software hub of Hyderabad, Bush visited the Archarya N.G. Ranga Agri University, where according to a press release “the President patted a buffalo named Murra” and “cuddled 4-year-old Venkatamma”. The reason for the visit was the fact that Bush was formalizing an agreement which came to be known as the…

How many of you have heard of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002? I had heard about the Act long ago but somehow never got down to actually trying to understand it and when I did get down to it while researching for this post I was quite stunned with both, the importance of this Act and the seemingly muted discussions of such an important piece of legislation in the mainstream press. Unlike The Patent Act which is considered the ‘sexier’…