On
Lifting of US Sanctions against India -
Its
IPR Implications
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The US President has lifted sanctions imposed on India ( and Pakisthan ) in the wake of her nuclear tests in 1998 .Though details are not known, the Indian Ambassador in US believes : "The sanctions imposed in 1998 were economic, military and restrictions on dual use technology. Some of these have been removed by President Clinton . But some also remained like the lending by international financial institutions or foreign sale or transfer of dual use technology. So we take it that these remaining restrictions have now been removed as a result of the Presidential waiver". While this step should undoubtedly be welcomed from the points of view of India's immediate strategic S&T-cum-industrial requirements, we cannot forget the IPR related implications in the future years to come. It is known to all, including countries such as the USA, that India has built up high level of resilience in her strategic S&T activities through large scale indigenisation/reverse engineering of materials and systems developed and used in similar systems abroad. It is important to recognize that all these materials and systems have by and large and invariably been IPR-protected very systematically through detailed, rigorous and high quality patents by rights assignees, namely, government funding agencies such US Department of Defense and S&T based MNCs such as GM, GEC, Hitachi, Alcatel, etc.There are two thousand patents in US alone on nuclear reactors and components. So also on launch vehicles, satellites, aero-engines, superalloys and advanced composites and even on softwares. India has been able to indigenise many required materials and systems only because of the protection provided to such activities under the Indian Patents Act,1970 (Cf: similar advantages for the Indian drug sector). Further, as long as the sanctions were in force, Indian S&T agencies could justify the indigenisation efforts under the pretext of "unfair trade practices" as well. Now that the clauses in the Patents Act are getting significantly altered under the TRIPS - compliant New IPR Regime and sanctions lifted, the indigenisation strategies are bound to be declared illegal. Taking into account the emerging political and techno-commercial trend in the international arena, such developments cannot at all be discounted. In other words, the Indian strategic S&T agencies would very soon have to work out a new "corporate" strategy, integral with their well considered long term programmes. This could be based on a mix of identifying their own core expertise and maintain this ability through competitive and state-of-art S&T projects, through limited IPR-licensing arrangements with well-identified international agencies , and so on. To that extent, this is also a moment of truth. We can ill afford to neglect
these IPR related issues while being at the same time also happy of the
historic event.
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