UAEM CALLS ON INDIAN GOVERNMENT TO RECONSIDER LEGISLATION REGARDING THE PATENTING OF PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH

Legislation Threatens Access to Medicines and Future Innovative Research

November 6, 2008

Berkeley, CA - Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), an international student advocacy group, today called on the Indian government to reconsider legislation that would govern the patenting of the results of publicly funded-research including publicly-funded medical research. The goals of the legislation are unclear and as currently written, the bill would likely harm access to medicines and impede the ability of scientists to conduct innovative research.

Proponents of the Indian bill claim it will help India to commercialize publicly-funded research by encouraging research institutions to seek patents. UAEM today issued a white paper raising questions about the impacts of university patenting in the United States under the Bayh-Dole Act while offering analysis of the Indian bill. The Indian bill is modeled after the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which encouraged research institutions to seek patents and commercialize discoveries made through publicly-funded research. While patenting has risen since the passage of Bayh-Dole, it has also expanded into areas of basic research where patents prevent other research from using basic tools to conduct life-saving research.

Perhaps even more troubling, Bayh-Dole and the Indian Act remove publicly-funded innovations from the public sphere and permit monopoly pricing on publicly-funded products without any true safeguards to protect the public interest. These steps have the potential to block millions from accessing medicines developed from research carried out with public funds.

“The Indian Act threatens to replicate all the failures of Bayh-Dole, but likely with more damaging consequences,” said Ethan Guillen, Executive Director of UAEM. “We urge the Indian government to open debate on this legislation to the public and reconsider whether to adopt US-style legislation whose value in the US has been brought into question.”

While Bayh-Dole included several weak safeguards to protect access in the interest of public health, a draft of the Indian IP Bill, which had been kept secret from public scrutiny until recently, have excluded even those ineffective access provisions. The Indian IP Bill was approved by the Indian Union Cabinet on October 31 and is now being considered by Parliament.

The white paper is available at http://www.essentialmedicine.org/bayh-dole/.

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About UAEM

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a coalition of students at over 40 top research institutions across the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. UAEM’s mission is to ensure that people in developing countries have access to medicines developed in universities and that university medical research addresses to the needs of the majority of the world’s population. As an organization which values innovation, we work to empower students to find new ways to improve access to health throughout the world.