Recent Trend in Patenting Activity in India and its Implications for Agriculture^§

The patenting activity is a mechanism to reward the innovators and therefore attracts more investment in R&D. Efforts to strengthen patents and other forms of IPRs were started with the TRIPS agreement in 1995 and these have led to increased patenting activity in the all member nations of the World Trade Organization. A major change in the Indian patent system came in 2005 when product patenting was introduced in all the fields of science. These reforms have also increased the scope for private investment in agricultural research. The study has revealed that the patent grants have increased significantly in all the fields of agricultural sciences, but most of these patents are owned by the foreign companies. The participation of foreign organizations has been increasing in India and they accounted for 75 per cent of the total patents granted during 2007–2012. Patent reforms thus have provided access to the technologies which previously were not available in India, particularly in the fields of transgenics, agro-chemicals and animal vaccines. Simultaneously, concerns for higher cost of protected technologies are also becoming louder and should be monitored to check monopolistic tendencies.