‘TRIPS flexibilities sacred; no plans to touch them’

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KG Narendranath: Nov 17 2009, 23:14 IST

Francis Gurry, the director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) was in the capital recently, amid the controversies over multilateral body’s plans to reform the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) which, some quarters allege, would lead to infringing upon the powers of national governments in matters of patent examination and grant. The fear is that WIPO’s efforts to de-clog patent pipeline will practically necessitate dilution of powers of national governments to use their hard-earned freedom to set limits for intellectual property rights (IPRs) even while being signatories to the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. Gurry, who has been part of WIPO’s top management team since 1997, attempted to allay these concerns in an exclusive interview with FE’s KG Narendranath.

WIPO’s plans to reform the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) are being viewed with certain scepticism by many governments and sections of the global industry. The fear is that the reformed PCT would undermine the ability of national government to make use of TRIPS flexibilities to strike the right balance between patent rights and national interests.

We plan to reform the PCT to address certain dysfunctions in the global patenting system, some of which are purely mechanical in nature. There is a choking of the patent offices across the world due to the spurt in number of patent applications in recent years.

When the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property was first concluded in 1883, there were approximately 80,000 patent applications, or new technological solutions, filed around the world. As

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