Across the world battlelines are being drawn in the normally quiet areas of academia and research. The opposing sides: those in favour of open and collaborative research and development as a means to promote innovation, and those in favour of perpetuating the profits of big pharma companies and academic publishers. Currently before a Select Parliamentary Committee is a controversial law that will deny basic healthcare to millions by making medicines much more expensive, lock up academic knowledge, and help privatise publicly-funded research. The law titled the Protection and Utilisation of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill 2008 (“PUPFIP Bill”, http://bit.ly/pupfip-bill) was tabled last December in the Rajya Sabha by the Minister for Science and Technology. It was created in utmost secrecy by the Department of Science and Technology, without so much as a draft version having been shared with the public for comments.

The PUPFIP Bill is an Indian version of a 1980 US legislation, the Bayh-Dole Act, and as per its statement of objects and reasons, it seeks to promote creativity and innovation to enable India “to compete globally and for the public good”. It aims to do so by ensuring the protection of all intellectual property (meaning copyright, patent, trade mark, design, plant variety, etc.) that is the outcome of government-funded research. The IP rights will be held by the grant recipient, or by the government if the recipient does not choose to protect the IP. This might seem like a good way to enable technology transfer from research institutes to the industry, but that would be a very myopic view, disregarding all evidence related to the failure of the Bayh-Dole Act. Last year Prof. Anthony So of Duke University co-authored an extensive analysis of the Bayh-Dole Act, and warned of the consequences of such legislation in developing countries.

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