Basmati's gone: Does anyone care for patent laws?

chandigarh: our scientists are not even trained to put their discovery on a proper format, applying for a patent requires a lot of knowledge-intensive work. no, we are not prepared for these challenges, says a professor from the department of chemistry, panjab university. the department of laws, punjab university - doesn't one expect everyone here to have patenting laws at their fingertips, all ready to dole out advice to entrepreneurs and scientists for coping with the changing international laws on patenting and intellectual property rights (now that basmati has more or less been taken away from india)? the truth is, it has a paper on intellectual property rights as part of the syllabi, where patent law is one of the topics - and it was introduced almost 10 years back! ten years? keeping in mind the fierce competition for patents in various countries around the world, is there any need to update the syllabus? to that, v k bansal, chairman, department of laws, says, it is a new subject, you cannot have experts in a new subject.the subject is there, but if students do not opt for it, what can we do? keeping the importance of the subject in mind in the changing scenario, shouldn't the study on the subject be made compulsory ? says bansal, the llb syllabi is controlled by the bar council of india, the papers on law of intellectual property incorporate patent act, copyright act, and trade and merchandise marks act - the department has produced nine llm s on the subject. when asked if some of these lawyers were practicing patent laws, the response was, but, there are not enough number of cases to have specialised lawyers. anybody can do it, you just have to read a few papers. specialisation is needed only when there are too many cases... where is the need right now? other members of the law faculty disagree, what we are teaching is obsolete - the patent act of 1970, everything has changed since wto, what is the use of teaching these laws now? sure, missing the bus is part of our legacy and we don't seem to mind doing it again and again. satish kapoor of university business school says, the problem is, the knowledge on the subject is so peripheral, after the agreement on trade related aspects of intellectual property rights (trips) agreement, everything has changed. in our department we do not have a paper on international patent laws as such but we do touch upon trips, its impact on pharmaceuticals and drugs industry, a few case studies and geographical indicators. why talk of panjab university alone? india as a whole is not prepared for facing the international patent regime, simply because it is very knowledge-intensive. so, if one wants to get an innovation patented locally, how does one go about it, particularly in pharmaceutical and drug industry where things change fast? c l kaul, director niper says, in the last couple of years there has been some effort towards preparedness, compared to what the scenario was five years back, but the problem is that of implementation - it is not up to the mark. we still have to look for some attorneys from the us to go through that long-winding course, they file applications for us, we need a sea change in the level of awareness. how about filing a patent application locally, there are a dozen experts in delhi, but here, no, not a single one. or as dr manoj of university business school puts it, we are academically prepared, but implementation is in the hands of bureaucrats. the second amendment bill on patent act 1999 is still being studied by joint parliament committee, and indian innovators keep waiting for the change to take place at its own pace, slowly.