Skip to main content

Govt. denies bowing to U.S. pressure on IP regime

Obama-Modi statement reiterates need for bilateral mechanism: Nirmala Sitharaman

The Modi Government on Friday denied that the reference to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in the joint statement from U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week, was an outcome of the U.S. “arm-twisting”. The U.S. consent to discussion of IPR issues through the bilateral mechanism is a re-affirmation of India’s stand that issues need bilateral discussion and not unilateral action, a Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) clarification said.
The clarification further said the bilateral mechanism agreed to for discussing IPR disputes — Trade Policy Forum (TPF) — was put in place by the UPA Government in March 2010 through a US-India statement, was signed by the then Commerce Minister and his U.S. counterpart. “We have not submitted to the U.S. or yielded ground…. We have reiterated that the U.S. should not act unilaterally,” Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told The Hindu.
The joint statement, the DIPP clarified, in fact “merely reiterates” the position India has held since 2010 — this consistent position being that the IPR legal regime in India is fully TRIPS compliant and that issues to be discussed have to be taken up in bilateral forums like TPF. India has consistently refused to be subjected to unilateral action, the clarification added.
The U.S. has proposed unilateral action against India under its Special 301 report, which is an annual report on IPR under U.S. Trade Act.
India has been repeatedly raising the issue of copyright piracy and misappropriation of traditional knowledge with the U.S., the clarification added.
The joint Indo-U.S. statement issued during Prime Minister Modi’s recent visit to the U.S. had said: “Agreeing on the need to foster innovation in a manner that promotes economic growth and job creation, the leaders committed to establish an annual high level Intellectual Property (IP) Working Group with appropriate decision making and technical level meetings as a part of the trade policy forum”.
The TPF that had not met for three years is scheduled to meet later this month. It includes the Innovation and Creativity Focus Group for consultations between the two countries at least twice a year on improving IPR protection and enforcement, working towards greater IPR awareness and fostering innovation and creativity through increased collaboration between U.S. and Indian innovators, the clarification stated.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

What's ailing Namami Gange programme?(DTE)

Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town. About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faec...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »