Monsanto does it again

April 26 is celebrated as International Seed Day when you rejoice in the vast biodiversity of the world— shrinking at a horrifying rate—and also fight for seed and food sovereignty. The last two appear to be a losing battle. In India, control of seeds has slipped out of farmers’ hands into those of the companies.

The NATCO CL fallout

No medicine can be cheap enough when one is fighting fatal diseases, specially the emperor of maladies. So there was much to shout about when Patent Controller P H Kurian granted Natco Pharma of Hyderabad a compulsory licence (CL) last month to make a generic version of Bayer Corporation’s sorefanib tosylate.

Prometheus bound

The Prometheus in the headline does not refer to one of the greatest figures of Greek mythology—the Titan who defied Zeus, the ruler of the Olympian gods, to steal fire and give it to humans. For his defiance, this champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, was bound to a stake and his ever-generating liver eaten daily by a giant eagle.

Old wisdom, new threats

Jaundice in the family has turned my thoughts to traditional knowledge. Modern or Western medicine has no remedy for jaundice, which is caused by an excess of the pigment called bilirubin in blood and is most commonly a symptom of viral hepatitis. The best treatment I know of is the use of a herb, keezhanelli, that my grandmother used to administer to those suffering from this debilitating condition.

ACTA fury goes viral

It is an unusual phenomenon that Europe has been witnessing in recent days. Hundreds of thousands of people have been out on the streets of cities as far apart as Tallinn, capital of Estonia, and Cork in Ireland protesting against the EU’s signing of a plurilateral trade agreement that is aimed at stopping piracy and counterfeiting.

Medicines Pool Swirls

Early this month a third Indian generics manufacturer, Emcure Pharmaceuticals of Pune, joined the UN’s Medicines Patents Pool (MPP). Emcure, like the other two, Aurobindo Pharma and MedChem, manufactures generic antiretroviral medicines used to treat HIV/AIDS. In an agreement signed with MPP it will be allowed to produce new HIV medicines for sale in developing countries.

Blacked out & hacked

Suddenly, the cyber world knows SOPA, or at least something about it. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, the latest initiative by the US to stop theft of intellectual property rights (IPRs), primarily the illegal downloading of music, films and games. SOPA is in the House of Representatives, and it has an equally evil twin in the Senate, PIPA or Protection of IP Act.

Small brother is watching you

In one sense it was funny—if you were not affected that is. Customers using the Internet services of Reliance Communications (RC) and some other services found their access to file-sharing websites blocked last month. When a friend went to one such site, Megaupload.com, he was outraged to find that it had been blocked. The message on the site said: “This site has been blocked.” At the bottom of the screen, the censor proudly proclaimed, “Copyright Reliance Entertainment (RE). All Rights Reserved”. Was it the blocked page that Reliance Entertainment was copyrighting as its own intellectual property?

What Durban did not discuss

Debate on the rights and wrongs of intellectual property rights (IPRs) always gets stuck on a fundamental question. Would there be any incentive to invent and create without the incentive of IPRs such as patents and copyright? The conventional view is that without the reward of IPRs there would be no investment in researching and developing new technology. The counterview is that IPRs create a barrier to access and actually stifle innovation.

Any cheers for Doha pact?

Last month, the chiefs of the big three Ws, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), met in Geneva to mark—one is reluctant to use the word celebrate—a special anniversary. Ten years ago, on November 14, 2001, developing countries had wrested a historic agreement at the fourth ministerial session of WTO in Doha. The Declaration on the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) and Public Health adopted in the Qatari capital was a political milestone as it marked the first time developing countries were able to wrest a concession in global trade negotiations.