-PTI India however maintained that the India Patent Act was in accordance with the TRIPS Agreement & the Paris Convention The US pharma industry has expressed concern over deteriorating intellectual property environment in India, alleging that patent rights in the country are unreasonably denied. "PhRMA remains concerned about the deteriorating intellectual property environment in India," Mark Grayson, PhRMA spokesman told PTI. The remarks by PhRMA or Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, representing America's...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The environment ministry's Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has cleared field trials for genetically modified rice, wheat, maize and castor for the Kharif season of 2013. The clearances - some of them extension of existing clearances that stood to lapse with state governments opposing field trials and others for relocating trial sites - come while the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill is pending before the...

-The Business Standard Angelina Jolie has inadvertently highlighted a key question about patenting Angelina Jolies recent double mastectomy was obviously a very radical decision. It is unusual for a healthy person to opt for pre-emptive surgery to avert the probability, however high it may be, of getting cancer. The tests Jolie relied on are also at the heart of a legal battle, which could affect US biotech patenting norms. Since the US...

-The Indian Express Institutionalising a mandatory process of consultation and dialogue would democratise not just law-making, but the state itself The formal institutions of India's parliamentary democracy have provided little space for citizens' participation in the making of laws. This has not, however, prevented citizens and citizens' groups from making significant attempts to watch, critique and contribute to the process. In fact, in recent years, it is clear that the lack of...

-The Times of India A study on the causes of severe diarrhoea in young children, conducted at seven sites in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asian countries including India, has found that rotavirus is responsible for most such cases. The Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS), published in the latest issue of Lancet, shows diarrhoeal disease, which is responsible for one in every ten child deaths during the first five years of life worldwide,...