View
213
Download
1
Category
Preview:
Citation preview
Journal of Intellectual Property Rights
Vol 11, May 2006, pp 207-213
Some Reflections on Patent Search: A Case Study of Medicinal Plants of India
S K Soam† and H B Rashmi
National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, Hyderabad 500 030
Received 17 February 2006, revised 15 April 2006
The current changes in legal and administrative framework of patents and other forms of intellectual property at global
and national level have brought changes in organizational and individual attitude towards protection and continuous
monitoring of IPRs generated by them. These changes also brought out economy and efficiency in generation of technology
or intellectual worth. The latest probing technique such as patent searching has been demonstrated as one of the most
effective ways to attain these objectives. This paper also describes constraints and opportunities in conducting patent search
using free Internet websites EPO and USPTO with the illustrative analysis of medicinal plants of India.
Keywords: Patent search, IPR, medicinal plants
In the public research organizations the most
important concern is the effective project
development with high level of economic efficiency
and protection of interests of key stakeholders such as
rural poor farmers via seeking patents. Thus patent
search is a matter of immense importance, and further
critical study due to the present legal context of
regulatory mechanism of access and use of biological
resources and benefit sharing.1 The critical questions
in the area of patents search and its utility are- How to
conduct patent search? What is the reliability and
efficacy of freely available official databases and
websites? How and which information can be used in
patent analysis? And what precautions to be taken for
patent search before submitting a research project
proposal? The present study investigates the issues
discussed by scientists i.e. characteristics of a good
patent search- plan a search strategy, identify retrieval
methods to reduce uncertainty and adopt search
processes to deal with complexity and ambiguity.2
When many scientists hear the word ‘patent’ their
experience might cause them to think of exorbitant
fee charging lawyers and expensive professional
patent searches.3 Bad patent search done is worse than
not done, searching patent literature is a mixture of
skill and art, it raises the issue that should scientists
go for outsourcing of patent search (commercial
approach) or do by themselves (academic or
conservative approach). The academic approach of
patent search has several advantages its cheaper,
freely available databases can be used (are these
databases effective?), extremely useful for
identification of research body or research groups thus
enhancing the university-firm link4 for commercial
partnership. Other benefits of academic patent search
are research segment analysis, identification of focus
of research and missing links, which help in
formulating futuristic research planning on the basis
of corporate strategic decision process.
Outsourcing of patent search is another option i.e.
commercial approach and it would need technically
and legally competent contractors who maintain strict
confidentiality5; enhanced capability of scientists in
patent search matters i.e. academic or conservative
approach would not only help most research
organizations in developing nations but would also
add value to the expected outcome of the outsourcing
approach. Despite many advantages of free databases
on the Internet, the disadvantage is that the novice
user does not realize that expert advice is needed at
the site itself; therefore scientists have to develop
expertise in patent search.6 The study provides some
insights to some of referred aspects of patent search to
integrate it as an important tool in research
management process where one should not only be
sure of good patent search but also take care of legal
status of the results received from Internet, and also
Internet citations in the search report.7
Prior Knowledge on the Subject
In India at present, Technology Information and
Forecasting Council (TIFAC) and National
Informatics Centre (NIC) are the only free online _____________
†Email: soam @naarm.ernet.in
J INTELLEC PROP RIGHTS, MAY 2006
208
databases for retrieving patent information. Around
11 million pages of Traditional Knowledge Digital
Library (TKDL)8 would provide information on
traditional knowledge associated with medicinal
plants of India that can be accessed by the patent
examiners all over the globe as a prior art search tool.
At the global level efforts in patent search for public
use were initiated with the introduction of
‘computerized classification searching to the public’
by the United States Patent and Trademark Office
(USPTO) in the 1970s. In 1972, the International
Patent Documentation Center (INPADOC) was set up
in Austria to create a world wide patent index
database. Later the European Patent Office (EPO).9 in
1998 launched esp@cenet.
The review of literature reveals the significant use
of patent search in the recent past in different arena of
research. Patent overlapping studies through
searching of patents and conducting cluster analysis
have led to identification of claim overlap profile of a
patent; patent relatedness so done, helps in assessing
the competitive potential of technology.10
Trends in
patenting activity in a particular research segment has
been verified by several scientists in the past e.g.
retrieving information about focus of research in
various sectors of Indian agriculture11
; systematic
patent analysis of phytochemicals in tea explored the
missing information because of nonexistence of
patents with respect to various enzymes.12
Examples
of technology specific exploratory research are also
available e.g. crafting the claims for different types of
bio-sequences and analysing problems in current tools
of sequence analysis and patent information
searching.13
The process of patent search has been on
the research agenda of some scientists e.g.
development of deterministic and probabilistic
decision models to decide what to search, where to
search, how to search further, which claims to read,
and how to check legal status etc.
The present study was conducted during December
2004 to February 2006, It was the appropriate time to
do the benchmark kind of patent search survey in the
turbulent situation of patenting in India due to receipt
and opening of mailbox applications under Article
70.8 of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS), and it is a well known fact that
significant number of patents have been sought for
medical and toiletries under Patent Cooperation
Treaty (PCT)14
Conducting patent search for those
medicinal plants of India about which traditional
knowledge already exists is the obvious choice due to
many factors such as recent cases of patent revocation
in developed nations, provisions of intellectual
property protection and benefit sharing on account of
traditional knowledge as reflected in various
international conventions, and special measures like
creation of TKDL by the Government of India to
protect traditional knowledge pertaining mainly to the
medicinal plants. The studies in a similar fashion
referring to the major reshuffle period that took place
in the patenting system have also been conducted
elsewhere which reflect the impact of major changes
that occurred in US law on 8 June 1995 and 29
November 2000.15
Methodology Employed The patent information is now conveniently and
widely available, it is also inexpensive when collected
through Internet websites. Several search tools are
available via Internet these are metasearch engines
such as Vivisimo, private service providers such as
IBM patent web server where the hits were averaging
170,000 per day in June 1997(ref.16) official
websites17
(some of which are highly preferred)18
and
commercial databases.19
But for simple search of
records commercial databases are quite costly e.g. one
complete record from Delphion costs six US Dollar, it
is therefore not possible for many public
organizations to bear huge cost involved in patents
record searching. Nevertheless analysis of patent
search record through these commercial databases
also reveals significant variation in searched
information.20
Implicitly the present study has the
content of likely approach to be followed by most of
the public organizations; therefore it was decided to
use the official databases of EPO and USPTO as
available to the public through their respective
websites. The patent search strategy was to give the
Latin name of genus and species in quick search and
keep the option of worldwide search. The data so
obtained was filtered and clustered for several kinds
of analysis, the similar methodological approach have
been used earlier.21
As the study pertains to the medicinal plants of
India, a list of 360 plants was prepared from the
publications of CSIR22
and ICAR.23
The criteria for
the selection were that the plant should have a name
in sanskrit and also reported medicinal use.24
The
patent search was done thrice i.e. December 2004 (1st
search), February 2005 (2nd
search) and January 2006
(3rd
search). Through scrutiny of individual patent
SOAM & RASHMI: SOME REFLECTIONS ON PATENT SEARCH
209
documents, utmost care was taken during patent
search so that studied species actually have the patent
and not merely reflected as a reference in the patent
document relating to some other matter.
Results and Discussion The patents search was done for the listed 360
plant species belonging to 93 families. The top five
families representing significant number of plants are
Fabaceae (25 species), Apocyanaceae (18 species),
Euphorbiaceae (15 species), Compositae (12 species),
Cucurbitaceae and Solanaceae with 11 plant species
each. The results of the patent searches conducted
thrice and the concerned points of discussion are as
follows:
Patents Records Analysis
During first patent search (Dec 2004), 160 plant
species (44.4% of studied species) which had patent
record, increased to 166 during second search (Feb
2005), though only 6 new species added to the list but
change of patent records during this period has
occurred in 63 plant species overall i.e. only 17.5% of
total species studied; for these 63 species the total
patent records in first search were 613, which in
second search increased to 1370 patent records
(123.5% change); the change which occurred in
patent records of important species is given in table 1.
Still there were 194 plant species (50.8% of studied
species) that did not have any patent record available
from EPO and USPTO websites, the study of
medicinal utility of these species against 22 identified
major disorders/diseases/uses reveal hard fact that
several of these plant species have significant
medicinal uses as presented in table 2. Out of this list
of 194 plant species, there are 98 species that are
reported of medicinal use in 2 to 4 disorders, 23
species are reported of medicinal use in 5 to 6
disorders, and 4 species i.e. Polygonum aviculare
(Nisomali), Portulaca quadrifida (Laghulonika or
Uppadyki), Plumaria acuminata (Kshira champa) and
Plumeria rubra Linn var. acutifolia (Kshira champa)
are reported of medicinal use in more than
6 disorders.
The total patent records in first search were 1832
(1652 in EPO website and 180 in USPTO website),
which increased by 41.3% to 2589 (2471 in EPO
website and 185 in USPTO website) during second
Table 1 Most important species reflecting significant number of
patents records
S. No. Name of the Vernacular name Dec 2004 Feb 2005
Plant
1 Glycyrrhiza Yashti- madhu or 48 259
glabra* Mulahatti
2 Catharanthus Sadabahar 145 145
roseus
3 Gymnema Meshashringi/Madhu 39 94
sylvestre* nashini
4 Gardenia Gandharaj 0 71
jasminoides*
5 Morinda Ashyuka
citrifolia 64 64
6 Momordica Sushavi/Karela 36 59
charantia*
7 Centella Mandukaparni/
asiatica Brahmi-manduki 56 56
8 Melia Mahanimba 23 52
azadirachta*
9 Phyllanthus Adiphala/Amalaka 40 40
emblica
10 Piper nigrum Maricha/Kali mirch 38 38
11 Terminalia Harra 15 37
chebula*
12 Nelumbo Ambuja
nucifera* 17 36
13 Tribulus Gokshura or 2 29
terrestris* Ikshugandha
14 Tagetes Sthulapushpa or
erecta* Ganduga 2 21
15 Rubia Kala-meshika or 1 19
cordifolia* Manjistha
*Top ten species, where significant variation occurred between
first and second patent search
Table 2 The number of species reported for various
medicinal uses
S.no. Human system of
disorder/disease/use
Number of
species
1. Digestive system 81
2. Skin 48
3. ENT 45
4. Urinary system 42
5. Rheumatism 31
6. Hepatitis and liver 30
7. Gynecological 24
8. Brain & neurological 22
9. Nutritional 20
10. Aphrodisiac 14
11. Diabetes 11
12. Venereal diseases 11
13. Heart & circulatory 10
14. Leprosy 10
15. Insecticide & toxins 10
16. Cancer/tumors 9
17. Reproductive system 9
18. Ophthalmic diseases 9
19. Dental problems 8
20. Antibiotic & antiseptic 7
21. Removal of body stones 4
22. Promoting hair growth 3
J INTELLEC PROP RIGHTS, MAY 2006
210
patent search. It means the average rate of addition of
new patent records was around 252 records per
month; on an average around 15.6 patent
records/species are available. The important point of
analysis is that the inclusion of new records during
second search is more in EPO, while in USPTO
increase was from180 to 185 records. Out of the total
records in second search, 67 records are common in
both EPO and USPTO websites; which constitute
2.6% of the total records. With the free availability of
patent documents on the Internet, one should not get
the impression that all the patents are available on-
line, as this is a false impression.25
Commercial
databases are also not immune to such kinds of
variations among searched patent records, the
significant variations are reported in the patent
records for the same word analysed simultaneously
using PlusPat, IFI CLAIMS and Delphion.26
During second search an observation was also
made about ownerships of patents by any Indian
individual (citizen or otherwise) or organization, it
was found that 8.6% of the patent records reflect
typical Indian names (these persons may be Indian
citizen, persons of Indian origin or non resident
Indians) or Indian organizations. Nevertheless these
patent records may be patents granted or patents
published, the detailed enquiry of the legal status of
the patent record was not done in this study. All the
patent documents published are not granted patents
e.g. in 2003 only 42% of published documents were
granted patents27
, therefore ensuring the legal status
either through EPO and USPTO websites or using
specific databases such as IFI Current Legal Status
Database (IFICLS) is necessary. If the public
organizations opt for outsourcing the patent search
then major issue is the credibility of the patent
searchers and organizations as evident through some
sort of certification. At present, no official agency is
available for the purpose but in 2003 after a
conference at EPO, an initiative was taken to set up
COPS.28
In public research organizations, there is nearly
one-year gap between application for a research
project for funding and final approval of grant
commitment and finally initiation of the project.
Keeping this situation in mind, a third patent search
was conducted during January 2006, almost one year
after the second search. In this search, patent records
were searched for those 194 species, which did not
have any patent record at the time of second search.
The patent records after third search reveal that 45.4%
of these species has 2352 patent records now29
, still
there are 106 plant species (54.6%) that did not have
any patent records available at EPO and USPTO
websites (see Appendix); interestingly the list
includes very well known plants such as Rauvolfia
serpentina syn. Ophioxylon serpentinum and
Momordica dioca etc.
Precautions during Patent Search Operations
While conducting patent search certain precautions
are necessary:
1. Ensure that variations in botanical names of a
plant have been collected from various floras and
other resources. For example the botanical name for
“brahmi” is given as Bacopa monniera in ICAR
publication23
and Bacopa monnieri in CSIR
publication22
; both the names provide varied number
of patent record in EPO and USPTO websites.
2. Experiment with additions or deletions of
some letters in the botanical names. For example
Boerhaavia diffusa and Boerhavia diffusa gives
varied number of search records in EPO website.
3. Search with complete botanical name
consisting of genus and species both. For example
one must be clear whether searching for Jatropha
multifida or Jatropha glandulifera, in the later
case no record was available.
4. Always conduct patent search with all the
available synonymous names. It has been
critically observed in the present study that the
maximum patent records are available in this way.
For example Cephaelis ipecacuanha also known
as Cephaelis acuminata and Psychotria
ipecacuanha, but in third search no record is
available for later two names in EPO or USPTO
website, while for Cephaelis ipecacuanha, 3 and
7 records are available in EPO and USPTO
respectively, though all USPTO records do not
contain any claim related to this plant, rather it
has been mentioned in the patent documents in
some other contexts.
Obstacles during Patent Document Downloading
Several obstacles have been observed in
downloading complete patent document, often the
patent has been granted but records are not available
in the website, many a times only bibliographic
information is available, occasionally the mosaics are
not available and sometimes document is in language
other than English, hence it is almost impossible to
SOAM & RASHMI: SOME REFLECTIONS ON PATENT SEARCH
211
collect complete document of all the searched records.
Free service providers are far from complete in many
ways such as- only one third of digitized documents
have a full text version; documents cannot be
translated automatically; in many official databases
records are missing from electronic archives; non-
availability of images, and constraints in capturing
full text.30
For detailed claim analysis, 220 patent documents
from complete list obtained from second search were
selected because these documents refer to granted and
valid patents, complete document alongwith images
were available, and also it is correct sample
representation of all the available patent records.
Through scrutiny of claims in these patent documents,
eight major sectors were identified for in-depth
analysis. In total studied documents, 477 claims fall in
one of these sectors which are distributed such as- the
maximum number of claims (27.5%) are for method
of drug administration/treatment, followed by claims
for poly-herbal drug formulation (23.3%) i.e. many
species along-with searched species have been used
for a medicinal preparation, process or method of
isolation of drug (15.9%), cosmetics (11.9%), new
molecule or chemical (10.7%), mono-herbal drug
formulation (8.4%), poly-herbal health drink (2.1%)
and mono-herbal health drink (0.2%). The claims for
new chemical and molecules are very less; this can be
seen in the light of the claims in the applications
received under mailbox provisions.31
Conclusion Several species including many important species
as listed in the appendix do not have any patents yet
AppendixPlant species with no patent records available at EPO and USPTO
Aconitum ferox
Adiantum incisum syn.
A. caudatum
Aerva lanata
Aerva tomentosa
Aganosma dichotoma syn. A.
caryophyllata
Ajuga bracteosa
Amorphophallus sylvaticus,
syn.Synantherias sylvatica
Anaphalis neelgerriana
Andropographis paniculata
Aristolochia bracteata
Arthrocnemum indicum
Asplenium adiantoides
Asplenium adiantum-nigrum
Asteracantha longifolia
Atropa acuminata
Azima tetracantha
Bauhinia acuminata
Bauhinia tomentosa
Canscora decussata
Chlorophytum arundinaceum
Clematis triloba
Clerodendron phlomidis
Cocculus hirsutus syn.
C. villosus
Colchium luteum
Coldenia procumbens
Combretum benghalensis
Crinum defixum
Crossandra spectabilis syn. C.
sericea
Cucumis trigonus
Cylista scariosa.
Dendrophthoe falcata syn
Loranthus falcatus,
L. longiflorus
Enhalus fluctuans
Erianthus Canadensis
Eulophia campestris
Eulophia nuda
Ficus heterophylla
Garcinia xanthochymus syn.
G. tinctoria
Gardenia gummifera
Gisekia pharnaceoides
Glinus oppositifolius syn.
Mollugo oppositifolia,
M. spergula.
Glycosmis pentaphylla
Gmelina asiatica
Hedyotis biflora
syn.Oldenlandia paniculata,
O. biflora.
Hedyotis corymbosa
syn.Oldenlandia corymbosa
Heliotropium eichwaldi
Hiptage benghalensis
Holostemma annularis syn.
H. rheedei
Hydrolea zeylanica
Ichnocarpus frutescens
Indigofera aspalathoides
Indigofera enneaphylla
Indigofera oblongifolia syn. I.
paucifolia
Jasminum angustifolium
Jasminum arborescens
Jasminum rottlerianum
Jatropha glandulifera
Kirganelia reticulata syn.
Phyllanthus reticulates
Leea macrophylla
Limnophila gratioloides syn.L.
indica, L. racemosa
Lingustrum indicum syn.
L. nepalense Wall
Luffa echinata
Malus verticillata
Melia composita
Merremia emarginata syn.Ipomea
reniformis
Merremia tridentata syn. Ipomoea
tridentata
Mollugo cerviana
Momordica dioca
Naregamia alata
Opuntia decumana syn.
O. ficus-indica
Ormocarpum cochinchinensis syn.
O. sennoides, O. glabrum
Pachystoma senile
Pancratium odoratissimus syn., P.
fascicularis, P. laevis, P.
variegatus,P. latifolius, P.
amaryllifolius, Ptectorius soland
Pedilanthus tithymaloides
Pentapetes phoenicea
Pergularia daemia syn. Daemia
extensa
Pithecellobium monadelphum syn.
P. bigeminum, P. gracile
Plumeria acuminata
Portulaca quadrifida
Randia uliginosa
Randia spinosa syn.R. dumetorum,
R. brandisii,
R. lonispina , R.
tomentosa Xeromphis
spinosa
Rauvolfia serpentina syn.
Ophioxylon serpentinum
Saccolabium papillosum
Salix tetrasperma
Schweinfurthia
sphaerocarpa
Sesbania sesbane
Solanum ferox
Strychnos nuxvomica
Strychnos potatorum
Swetia densifolia syn.
S. decussata
Symphorema racemosa
Tribulus alatus
Trichodesma indicum
Trichosanthes cucumerina
Trichosanthes dioici
Tylophora tenuis
Vanda tessellata syn.
V. roxburghii
Vateria acuminata syn
V. copallifera
Ventilago madraspatana
Vepris bilocularis syn.
Toddalia bilocularis
Viscum articulatum syn.
V. nepalense
Zanthoxylum limonella
Ziziphus glabrata
Ziziphus oenoplia
J INTELLEC PROP RIGHTS, MAY 2006
212
and some of them have very high utility in quite
complex diseases. Enough scope is thus available for
patent oriented research, it is not necessary to have
very complex kind of research projects, and the
patents have been taken on simple polyherbal
formulations also. It is also observed that the results
would be more meaningful if utmost care is taken in
selection of means for patent search, utilizing multiple
search options and careful search operations. Besides
lack of multilingual information access, the
statistically designed decision support models for
quantification of risk associated with techno-legal
decision is another grey area of research in the field of
patent search. It is also observed that records in the
patent search change very fast, additions of the new
records occurs within a day, therefore it is suggested
that keeping in mind advance project planning
research strategy should be made after ensuring best
patent search.
Acknowledgments The authors are thankful to the referees for their
highly useful and constructive comments to improve
the quality of the paper.
References 1 Various provisions of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and
the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act,
2001 ensures the use of biological resources in a manner that
rights of country and communities are protected. The
National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), Chennai, and
Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority,
New Delhi are the constitutional authorities for effective
implementations of rules under these Acts.
2 Julia Deboys, Decision pathways in patent searching and
analysis, World Patent Information, 26(1)(2004), 83-90.
3 Douglas Drysdale, Paten update, Targets, 2(4)(2003), 177-
178, available at www.drugdiscoverytoday.com.
4 Brian Harmon, Alexander Ardishvili, Richard Cardozo, Tait
Elder, John Leuthold, John Parshall, Michael Raghian and
Donald Smith, Mapping the university technology transfer
process, Journal of Business Venturing, 12 (6)(1997),423-
434.
5 Kazenske Edward R, The Future of prior art searching at the
United States patent and trademark office, World Patent
Information, 25(4)(2003), 283-287.
6 Stephen van Dulken, Free patent databases on the Internet:a
critical view, World Patent Information, 21(4)( 1999), 253-
257.
7 Archontopoulos Eugenio, Prior art search tools on the
Internet and legal status of the results: a European Patent
Office perspective, World Patent Information, 26(2)(2004),
113-121.
8 TKDL is a collaborative project between National Institute of
Science Communication and Information Resources
(NISCAIR), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
and Department of AYUSH, Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare, which is being implemented at NISCAIR.
9 Espacenet is perhaps most widely used and comprehensive of
the freely available databases, for details please refer paper
of Douglas Drysdale on endnote 3.
10 Juneseuk Shin and Yongtae Park, Generation and
Application of Patent Claim Map: Text Mining and Network
Analysis, Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, 10(3)
(2005), 198-205.
11 Rekha Mittal and Gian Singh, Patenting Activities in
Agriculture from India, Journal of Intellectual Property
Rights, 10(4)(2005), 315-320.
12 Rashmi Phadnis and Hirwani R R, Patent analysis as a tool
for research planning: case study of phytochemicals in tea,
Journal of Intellectual Property Rights, 10(3)(2005),
221-231.
13 Heahyun Yoo, Chandra Ramanathan and Cynthia Barcelon-
Yang, Intellectual property management of biosequence
information from a patent searching perspective, World
Patent Information, 27(3)(2005), 203-211.
14 34,000 applications were filed under PCT, developing
countries represented 6.7% of international applications, and
India filed 648 applications. For details please refer
www.wipo.int.
15 Simmons Edlyn S, Trends disrupted – patent information in
an era of change, World Patent Information, 27(4)(2005),
292-301.
16 Sibley Jim F, The Internet dawn of extensive, easily
available and low cost databases from patent offices, World
Patent Information, 26(1)(2004), 75-76.
17 Among the official Internet websites the most important are
http://ep.espacenet.com/ (esp@cenet) of EPO and
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/ of USPTO. The other important
official databases are Austrian INPADOC and French INPI
and Japan Patent Office (JPO) database.
18 The EPO and USPTO databases are preferred due to many
reasons e.g. more than 75% documents in these databases
have full text. For details please see Lagemaat Willem Geert,
Patent Archives- the silent threat, World Patent Information,
27(1)( 2005), 27-29.
19 The commercial databases such as PlusPat, IFI CLAIMS,
Delphion, and gene sequence databases like GeneSeq,
GeneBank, Registry and PCTGEN etc. are the value added
databases, which provide avenues for various kinds of patent
analysis.
20 Please see page 296 of paper by Simmons as referred at
endnote16.
21 Pal S K, Madhukar A and Mitra A, Patenting in
Micromagnetic Sensors, Journal of Intellectual Property
Rights, 10(2)(2005), 99-105.
22 Anon, The Useful Plants of India, (Publications and
Information Directorate, Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research, New Delhi), 1986, 918 pages.
23 Umrao Singh, Wadhwani AM and Johari, BM, Dictionary of
Economic Plants of India, (Indian Council of Agricultural
Research, New Delhi), 1983, 283 pages.
24 The assumption was that listed plants would represent the
species about which the Indian traditional knowledge is most
ancient.
25 It has been illustrated that some patent record on EPO’s
Bacon Numerical Service (BNS) and not in INPADOC and
SOAM & RASHMI: SOME REFLECTIONS ON PATENT SEARCH
213
vice versa. For details please see page 27 of paper by
Lagemaat as referred at endnote 7.
26 Please see page 296 of paper by Simmons as referred at
endnote 16.
27 Please see page 295 of paper by Simmons as referred at
endnote 16.
28 Certification of Patent Searchers (COPS) registers the
organizations and individual patent searchers to raise the
status and bring them recognition through improving their
standard of search and also certifying it. For details see,
http://www.cops-news.info/
29 It includes one patent record for Withania coagulans (patent
number WO2005030232, date of publication 7th July 2005)
where this plant is used in preparation of the polyherbal
composition for treatment of AIDS.
30 These concerns have discussed by Lagemaat (2005) in his
paper at various places. For details see his paper as referred
at endnote 19.
31 Fredrick Abbott et al (2005) describe that out of the 7000
applications under mail box provisions that made public,
only 250 applications belong to new chemical entities and
new drugs, and 6,750 applications relate to something else
i.e. mostly related to “ever greening” of the patents. For
details see, Frederick Abbott M, Amy Kapczynski and
Srinivasan T N, The draft patent law, The Hindu, 12 March
2005.
Recommended