Friday, March 31, 2006

In a Nutshell

Its really surprising that even the "top trade officials" make mistakes in their statements to reporters. Economic times dated 29th Match 2006, on page 18th in the left-most corner reads as follows:
INDIA and Pakistan agreed on Tuesday to jointly patent a popular variety of aromatic basmati rice, top trade officials said.

Even a novice in intelluctual properties like me can disregard this statement. The very first criteria of getting a patent is that the concept should be novel and something that is not known before. How can a popular variety of something can get a patent when its already in the public domain.

For those who don't know much about all this, just a note on patents: To get a patent you just need three things:
  1. Novelty
  2. Inventive step
  3. Utility
Its not that I read the whole of ET and find out all the mistakes done and make bread-n-butter out of it. This issue was discussed in my IPR lecture. Now the prof asked us to write to the ET officials spotting the error. While he was asking I was thinking is it really worth writing to them and wasting so much of my precious time (which I could utilize in watching movies like Mr. 100% :P). No seriously even few days back when there was some reservation news ET made a headline of nothing. The leading newspaper proudly published that IITs and IIMs might have 49.something % seats reservered. To the best of my knowledge this move of government was for state-level-colleges and not the IIs. Anyways its not new for press to manipulate stories.

All is well that ends well. I still read ET :). I once thought I would discontinue the newspaper. But the morning I was about to do that, it had a headline of deal between two companies worth some few thousand crores (something around 4000 ). Now how can there be a better start of the day? The time when I don't know why I'm leaving Nandita Das lonely in the bed, when I oftenly switch off my ceiling fan thinking that it must be tired , if for just Rs 2.50 you tell me "good morning" in such good words I don't mind.

Be it manipulated, be it absolutely wrong who cares. If I'm really concerned I'll go to net and check myself, after I figure out that there is no such Nandita Das exists and Crompton Greaves is a good company to make a ceiling fan rotate whole night without getting tired :)

Cheers!

5 comments:

  1. Dude!

    The are not getting patent to patent it [that is keep it out from public domain], they are getting patent to make sure someone else does not get patent on it [and make sure it stays in the public domain].

    This brings me to the point I always try to keep making, IP is the reason for next world war. Every country has right to save its citizen from diseases and to give its economay a chance, and no single company in a different country can be allowed to control it. Inter Country IP blanket protection protection, and the WIPO/WTO like organizations using arm twisting/blackmailing to ensure it are the biggest sham faced by world today, atleast the world outside of US.

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  2. Yah you got the point correctly, they don't want someone else to utilize the "basmati" brand built up in years. But patent is not the right thing for such protection. (In the end all this patent and IPR issues are to get protection right?).

    The right word is "Geographical Indication". They should file a GI to protect others from not using brand "basmati". [Details ahead someone not interested may skip] So this would restrict others from growing rice somewhere else and market it as "basmati". The GI would let only the rice produced in that particular geograpphy marketed as "basmati".

    As I said earlier you can't get a patent on something as popular as "basmati rice". The concept has to be novel. Also, you can't get a patent on a method of agriculture in India.

    Actually, we are some 20 years behind US in our patent laws.

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  3. nahin raja amit is right ...

    I love it dude wat a corelation IP n world war.

    Aise how does this article falls into HUMOR??? M i missing smthing or my grey cells stopped working??

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ankit Yah corrected the category. Was testing labelr and obviously the first category which I created was Humor :)

    About this world war thing I'm not sure. Laws are made to manipulate situtaions. A very good example could be:
    In the US you cannot use a patent to perform experiments (unless you submit the data/results to some organisation [sorry forgot the name of the org.]),
    but in India its allowed. This has recently increased investment in India, as companies can perform experiments(for their own use) on the patents filed in the US.

    @prakash Thanx. wait n watch lot more to come ;)

    ReplyDelete
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