new delhi

India is to join the Paris Convention of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in a move which is expected to bring a major liberalization of its patent laws.

The decision, which will simplify both international patenting for Indian scientists and the exploitation of international patents in India, was welcomed by scientists but criticized by some environmentalists.

“This is going to give our scientists tremendous impetus for research,” says Ragunath Mashelkar, head of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India's largest government scientific agency.

“It will lead to a lot of savings in the patenting process,” says Suresh Chandran, an expert on patents at the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi.

Under India's 1970 Patents Act, inventors of new chemicals or drugs can only patent manufacturing processes, not products. As a member of the World Trade Organization, India is already obliged to provide product patents by 2005. Changes to the 1970 act were resisted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) when it was in opposition, and last week's decision by the BJP government to join the Paris convention is seen as a signal that a change in the law is imminent.

Mashelkar says membership will allow Indian inventors access to WIPONET, a $20 million computerized database on patents. India also becomes eligible to join the Budapest Treaty, allowing its scientists to maintain patentable microorganisms in their own repository instead of having to deposit them with one of the 26 repositories abroad recognized by the treaty.

Foreign scientists may now find the Indian patent regime less rigid, according to Chandran, because applications from member countries have to be given priority. Under the convention, a patent may not be refused because domestic law does not permit it — an indication that India plans to amend its law against product patents.

Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist, says that India will now come under pressure from multinationals to introduce product patents for drugs. She adds that drug prices rose by 20 per cent in Pakistan after it signed the convention in 1994.

Joining the convention before implementing biodiversity laws will, Shiva warns, “facilitate biopiracy globally and create a perverted situation, in which Indian patent offices will recognize patents based on biopiracy of Indian indigenous knowledge systems”.