Wednesday, 19 June 2013

Recent controversies in patent law


Intellectual property law deals with providing safeguard from pilferage of a man’s creations. It is divided into patents, copyrights, trademarks, and copyright in design and so on. The protection of one’s intellectual property not only ensures that only the creator shall get the rewards of his labour but it also encourages further development of the product.

Patents are awarded either for a product or a process, i.e., either for an entirely new physical object or for a novel way of creating something. Thus, there can be a patent for a machine or on a medicine or on a particular method of its preparation.

Medicines- Supreme Court of India

The Supreme Court of India rejected the Novartis drug patent and upheld the view that under Indian Patent Act for grant of pharmaceutical patents apart from proving the traditional tests of novelty, inventive step and application, there is a new test of enhanced therapeutic efficacy.

Human genome-Supreme Court of United States

The US Supreme Court held that human genome cannot be patented because it is found naturally in the human body and just because it has been extracted does not make it patentable item. The court observed that DNA is a product of nature and not subject to patent.

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