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India has “improved” its ranking on the International IP Index, but just barely.
The annual index just released in Washington by the United States Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Centre on Wednesday ranked India in the bottom pack, for the fifth year on a trot. India stands at 43 of the 45 economies assessed on IP, a shade better than its previous rankings of being the last but one or the last.
India and the United States have a strained relationship when it comes to IP, especially on the pharmaceutical front, among others. The Index assesses countries on criteria including patents, trademarks, copyright, trade secrets, enforcement, and international treaties.
And though India has crept up one notch, that has largely to do with performance against the five new criteria used to assess the IP environment in the country, rather than actual improvement in the environment itself, the report said. The new indicators included design rights, patent opposition proceedings and barriers to licensing agreements.
“In India, many of the same challenges to innovation remain,” David Hirschmann, GIPC’s President and Chief Executive said in a statement. “Although India has made incremental progress, the government needs to build upon the positive rhetoric of its IPR policy with the substantial legislative reforms that innovators need.”
Further, he said, “If Indian policymakers wish to deliver the kinds of results the Modi administration once hoped for, they can act to address issues that impact Indian innovation, such as software patentability, life sciences patents, copyright protection and enforcement, and trade secrets protection.”
Besides the overall “anemic IPR policy” , the report points to challenges in the scope of patentability for computer-implemented inventions, Section 3(D) of the Indian Patent Act, and the recent High Court of Delhi decision regarding photocopying copyrighted content.
Pointing to challenges in the region, the report notes, “the High Court of Delhi judgment in the long-running case between some of the world’s leading academic publishers (including both Oxford and Cambridge University presses as well as Taylor & Francis) and the University of Delhi and a local photocopy shop. In a significant blow to rights holders, not only did the court find nothing wrong with the University of Delhi providing a photocopied master-copy of course texts for students to photocopy themselves in the university library, but it also did not object to the obvious commercial gain derived from the copy shop for providing this service. Confusingly, while in December 2016 the case was set to be heard again in 2017 (following the intervention by a division bench of the Delhi High Court), no accompanying court order was given to suspend the ongoing and widespread infringement of the rights holders’ copyright.”
Global IP environment
Predictably, the US heads the IP Index, with Pakistan and Venezuela being the last two on the list.
However, the IP environment globally this year is headed in different directions, the report said. “Anxiety over globalization and free trade deals are not new; in fact, it has affected most major modern trade negotiations.”
Pointing to the concern over the access to medicines, the report refers to the the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines released in September 2016. The final report and recommendations was based on a premise that “IP rights are inimical to human rights.”
Unfortunately, the panel’s mandate and report had a narrow, misguided focus on perceived inconsistencies between IP rights and access to medicines as opposed to the wider political, health infrastructure, and socioeconomic factors that are the true access barriers to medicines, the Index said.
“The panel also failed to fundamentally recognize how long-term medical and biopharmaceutical innovation depends on the existence of IP rights. In the words of a World Intellectual Property Organization representative who intervened at a hearing for the High-Level Panel, “without productive innovation, there is nothing to have access to,” the Index added.
jyothi.datta@thehindu.co.in
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