On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:42, Vickram Crishna<[email protected]> wrote: > > Arguably, this is not a given. The very basic principle of patenting is that > the idea or innovation not be in the public domain,
hmm....the public domain part is not entirely true. IIRC, some years ago, a yoga series (was it called the Bickram Yoga?? i dont remember correctly) was granted a patent in California, it was challenged and later reduced to a series of processes - The last i read, the patent was granted for the the yoga process which were to be done in a specific order of 25 (or 26 ?) steps inside a sauna. Afaik, in the USA its the discovery "process" that gets awarded the patent -- essentially, if it takes you 5 steps to your patented $NewDrug, another person/pharma company cannot replicate or circumvent these 5 step process by introducing a derived cheaper alternative. IIUC, they can circumvent the patent by introducing step# 3.1 and 4.1 in the process but even that is going to change in India as per the Mhashelkar report (i'd love to be corrected on this) and the TRIPS agreement. http://www.svaksha.com/post/2007/patents-are-evil [/shameless plug and complete OT-ness] || vid || http://www.svaksha.com || _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
