The implementation of Patents Act, as last amended in 2005, raises significant issues of immediate concern to patients across the world. INDIA'S Patents Act has an interesting history. Enacted first in 1911 as the Indian Patents and Designs Act in the colonial era, it primarily addressed the interests of inventors, who did not want their inventions infringed upon by anyone who copied them or adopted the methods used to make them....

Q The idea of regulating the media is very much in the news. What are your views on the matter? A Obviously, the ideal way to do this would be self-regulation. I don’t think anyone in the profession has any doubt about that. Everybody agrees that self-regulation is a very good thing, but we don’t seem to move beyond that. And we are consequently opening a window for people who want...

At a recent meeting in Kolkata, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee threw up his hands for not being able to present a bold Budget because of coalition politics. Indeed, Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, a coalition partner, has been a thorn in the side of the UPA. She enjoys a veto on nearly everything that the government wishes to do. If such are the compulsions of coalition politics, should we not...

Maoists wreaked their vengeance on tribals in a village in Chhattisgarh’s undivided Dantewada district, bordering Andhra Pradesh, by allegedly molesting women, assaulting elders, and torching houses for not handing over to them a local Salwa Judum (disbanded anti- Naxal vigilante force) leader, officials said on Wednesday. The brutality by the armed rebels, who numbered around 60-70, on the Dorla tribe population of Maraiguda in the newly created Sukma district (carved out...

-The Deccan Chronicle Adivasis of 40 villages in and around the Kawal wildlife sanctuary, which was recently notified as a tiger reserve by the state government, have started passing unanimous resolutions against the reserve. Adivasi leaders argue that notifying a tiger reserve without the consent of local Adivasis was unilateral and against the Panchayat Raj Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA). They are also demanding, in their resolutions, that state government cancel...