Thaindian News

New Delhi, Apr 26 (ANI): Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma today reiterated that India will not accept any trips plus decision that is taken outside the multilateral framework. Speaking after the third Annual Intellectual property Awards, here today, Sharma expressed concern over the growing efforts of certain developed countries to enact Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) which contain TRIPS Plus provisions relating to enforcement of Intellectual Properties.”We believe that certain provisions in this proposed agreement are violative of TRIPS and we are firmly against such move which fall outside multi-lateral framework of WTO,” he added. Referring to seizure of Indian generic medicines in EU while in transit to Latin America in October 2008,Sharma informed that as a result of India’s firm stand, during the recent India-EU Summit, EU informed that the Commission has intensified efforts on finalisation of proposal for revision of regulation 1383 and hopefully they should be able to complete their international processes shortly. Sharma said that the legislative regime in India which circumscribes the IP rights is a robust one and strikes a balance between the interests of the IP creators and the larger interests of the IP users. Referring to the data base of more than two lakh formulations in the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), he expressed the hope that this data base which has been created in five international languages - English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese will enable search by global patent examiners to prevent misappropriation of our traditional knowledge. He shared with the gathering that soon sector specific Innovation Councils which will identify specific initiatives and measures which need to be taken in each identified priority sector will be established. “We shall shortly be issuing the Terms of Reference and Composition of sectoral Innovation Councils for IPRs. Thrust areas have been identified on which council will give its recommendation,” he said. Applauding the pharmaceutical sector for it is entrepreneurship, Sharma said: “I feel that we have reached a stage of maturity that our pharmaceutical companies must move away from reverse engineering to discovery of new molecules and drug delivery systems.” (ANI)