From: narayana@oracorp.com (K. T. Narayana)
Subject: Re: AIDS drug by indian firm
Organization: ORA Corporation, Ithaca, New York
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 23:31:06 GMT

In article <1i509oINNslo@roundup.crhc.uiuc.edu> sunder@grusin.crhc.uiuc.edu (Srinivas Sunder) writes:
>In article <1993Jan2.194625.5575@udel.edu>, chitoor@dori.cis.udel.edu (Srikrishnan R. Chitoor) writes:
>|> >
>Actually, most patent laws are designed to expire in about 5-10 years. I
>believe that one of the intellectual-property quarrels between India and
>the US is about the fact that Indian laws allow only for a 5-year patent 
>protection period, while the US has a longer one. I think that in the US,
>you can use a more efficient process (so long as you have either
>invented the process or have bought rights to it) to manufacture something
>only if the original product-patent has been bought or has expired. In 
>India, there is apparently only a patent on the process, but not one on
>the product itself. So, they think that they are eligible to use the
>(more efficient?) process even though the product patent has itself not
>expired (actually, does not exist).
>
>[...]
>
>|> >>But the U.S. government and its imperialist allies in Europe and 
>
>Fine. Since you brought up the question of whether or not US laws are 
>too monopolistic and anti-free-market, let me address that. The central
>idea that drives drug companies to do research and market their products 
>are the profits generated by marketing the products of their research. To 
>do research and develop a product takes millions (sometime billions) of 
>dollars, and the idea of providing a patent on the product before allowing 
>other producers with to manufacture it using the same basic research-results
>but a more efficient process from manufacturing it is to provide time for the
>original company to recover its investment. 
>
>The Indian Government, in its wisdom (or lack thereof) has decided that product 
>patents don't mean a damn thing and that only process patents matter. Is there 
>something wrong with such an approach? You bet your bottom dollar there is.
>
>Right now, when there are hardly any companies in India doing any serious
>research to develop drugs (whether a cause or an effect of the lack of 
>protection is a chicken-egg problem), the idea of no product patents on drugs is
>eminently sensible -- but only if you are afflicted with myopia. If there is
>no incentive for Indian companies to do R&D to develop drugs (which incentive
>is robbed by the lack of protection for the product), we will be permanently
>reliant on foreign companies, and on our ability to plagiarize things that
>some foreign company like B_W or B_M_S (Bristol Myers Squibb) have spent
>loads of cash on, for our drugs. We will also wind up earmarked as a bad nation
>to do business or any kind of R&D in (leaving our scientists to rot away in
>Government owned labs), and that can't help but be bad for us in the long run.
>
>The law is not progressive, just short-sighted. Even if the process is found
>to be different, it is a bad idea in the long run, to be allowed to market
>it while B-W has yet to recover its investment, and can only result in a
>worsening of trade-relations between India and the US. The dispute here is
>more fundamental than the endless quibbling over whether the patent law-periods
>are too short in India or too long in the US. The dispute is over the entire
>concept of there being two separate patents for a product and the process
>requires to make it. India apparently does not believe in product-patents, only
>process-patents.
>
>Actually, you can't. The product-patent on a cow expired looooong back. On
>the other hand, if you have the ability to genetically engineer a new variety
>of cow (with more healthy meat or milk or ivory horns or whatever), you CAN
>have a patent on that (no joke) and obtain a royalty of some kind everytime
>your authorized agent sells one. Harvard did manage to patent some variety
>of genetically engineered mouse to facilitate cancer research.
>
>
>Fallacious reasoning. If a company is to spend tons of bucks developing a 
>product (which takes a helluva lot of resources -- much more than it does
>to develop a new process to manufacture it post-invention) only to see their
>profits grabbed away because some interloper managed to make the fruits of 
>their research cheaper, but did not spend a pie on the original work needed
>to develop the product, then you take away the incentive for them to
>do the R&D in the first place (after all, there will be no D if the R does not
>take place first).
>
>Competition in drug manufacturing IS allowed in the US, but only after the 
>product patents have expired, which seems eminently fair to me (the concept
>i.e., we can quibble endlessly about the periods of the patents etc.)
>
>I hope that some Commerce ministry bigwig sees the logic in this and has the 
>sense to try and work out some arrangement like allowing the (new and improved, 
>but plagiarized) AZT to be marketed only in India, thus shutting off a market 
>for B-W, but without straining relations excessively by also butting into other 
>foreign markets. We NEED these foreign dudes and companies.
>
>|> -Krishna.
>|> Opinions are mine.
>
>-- 
>Srinivas Sunder                                         sunder@crhc.uiuc.edu


There is a fundamental problem in Srinivas Sundar's argument. It says
if I design a product P, then I can patent it even if the process
used to design P is inefficent. When you allow such a thing to happen
drug companies can always design expensive processes to bleed the client,
and be happy that their products are protected from competetion.
By making processes patentable and products non patentable, the
market is driven by efficient processes. The person who seeks to
build an efficient process wins. That is capitalism. There is no
such thing as protection for investments for companies in a capitalist
society. The capable survive, the incapable fail! That is the law.
That has to be obeyed!

When people talk of Intellectual property rights, many do not know
the consequences of these laws on the computer hardware and software
systems. Any tom, dick, and harry can go and claim a patent an
algorithm. Algorithms are desinged on the basis of need. If someone else
designs the same algorithm using his brains, the damn thing cannot be
used in his products. 

GOI should not accede to the US patent and Intellectual properties act!
It is a question of freedom of thought and action! 

...kt
Xref: sparky soc.culture.indian:42092 soc.culture.tamil:4666