With the globalization of economies, countries look for lessons on building and sustaining effective national innovation policies. One country we here at PFF have talked about is India. But India also provides insights for other countries seeking to obtain the status it has achieved over the past few decades. Business Standard reports that one area where India lends experience falls on its patent policies. In India, previous non-acceptance of product patents "encouraged piracy and production of sub-standard (pharmaceutical) drugs in garages", and discouraged:

... investments and innovation ...average R&D expenditure was less than 1 per cent of turnover. (As a result of allowing product patents, R&D expenditure has now increased to almost 10 per cent of turnover for larger Indian pharmaceutical companies and patents have been obtained, not only in India, but also in developed countries, the PCT having helped.)

Lack of product patents in India also resulted in:

Companies mov(ing) away from producing essential drugs to non-essential drugs. ...Consequently, essential drugs had to be imported, a perverse instance of import-promoting industrialisation, probably the only country in the world to actually adopt such a strategy. Instead of research on drugs relevant for India-specific diseases, there was an obsession with cardio-vascular diseases, drugs for which could be pirated.

Currently, with patents for pharmaceutical products:

The Indian pharmaceutical industry is now in a period of transition, no longer scared of intellectual property protection ... it is bizarre that other countries don’t pick Indian policies that facilitate this transition and instead, pick policies that India has discarded.

posted by Noel Le @ 8:37 PM | Infrastructure, International

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