India blocks Colgate patents for spices
deccanherald.com
deccanherald.com
But then again I suppose this "solves" the problem that there's not enough productive work to go around.
In a 100 years perhaps all human endeavor will be about fighting over imaginary monopolies.
I am glad such a repository exists to handle prior art for Indian medicines. I am worried about African/other poor countries that are unable to protect their indigenous medicinal use cases since they may lack the repository. Perhaps they can piggy back on the Indian effort or may be a worthy premise for a socially oriented startup with some funding from the big and/or little names in VC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
and rent seeking
> How is patenting combination of spices going to increase innovation?
I'm sorry, but you seem to have jumped from "patents" to "patenting combinations of spices" here. I don't think that you did this intentionally, but you replaced the topic in between; first, you formulate your thesis as "we should abolishing patents", and later, you seem to be proving it, but you really only prove a different thesis, "we should abolish patenting combination of spices".
Don't you see the difference between these two?
On that note: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2834 (it's a textual story, not a comic)
If you want to abolish patents, you need to create a new system by which companies can benefit from their innovation.
The above patent in the OP is egregious, and I can't really support it.
To your point, innovation may happen, but the inventor may not get compensated along the way. Patents try to bridge the gap. They are not perfect, but they do seem to work, in my opinion.
1. I'm more inclined to judge a policy by the net benefits to society rather than specific participants in it.
2. I actually think the patent system favors large enterprise more often than it does small companies. For a number of reasons. One of them being so much is patented you need a large portfolio of covering things your competitors are probably infringing on as a deterrent from them suing you or counter attack if they do. etc. As a small player, you can't do this.
Your example is perhaps one of how the system was envisaged to work - though I'd be interested to know how you go if ever you needed to finance legal proceedings against a big corporate.
Drug research should be publicly funded and the results given away to all. Not just because it the right thing to do, but because it is the most efficient.
For example, all the time that pharmaceutical companies "waste" developing new drugs would be saved!
I said nothing of individuals, that isn't the dichotomy. All groups are not companies.
Sometimes its not about innovation. Many companies buy patents and make high priced drugs. These drugs can be made available to the poor for very less price, but patents like these block local makers from doing so.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/all-tha...
Kudos to the Indian government for coming up with an effective way to combat these bogus patents.
Page loads fine (Actually started reading the article) then goes to http://www.deccanherald.com/enable_javascript.html
How retro (Plus the fact that the page actually DOES work without JS...)
The TKDL (Traditional Knowledge Digital Library) interface really sucks.. but still has useful info.
Ayurveda - http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Ayurveda/Ayu_Advancesear...
Unani (Islamic Indian medicine) -http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Unani/Una_Advancesearch....
Siddha (South Indian medicine) - http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/siddha/Sid_Advancesearch...
Try searching for something like "basil". you get comprehensive formulae for ancient indian recipes, methods of application,etc.
cf. http://dsalsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.p...
This quote used to really sum up my opinion, but the more time I've spent growing and eating and researching a variety of plants/herbs/spices, it's quite clear that many of them do have quite a lot of beneficial health effects, often unique in being more effective or having less side-effects than western medicine. Plants have chemical-producing machinery that is in many ways far more advanced than what humans have developed.
And many of them have been under-researched, I think both because of 20th century biases and the regulatory/patent environment, so in fact there's quite a gap between what we call medicine and treatments in alternative medicine which could be reasonably considered likely beneficial/effective.
Just as an example, go read the Wikipedia pages and some assorted Googled info on what was listed in the article: nutmeg, ginger, “Bakul” tree, camphor, cinnamon, turmeric, Indian banyan, black pepper, long pepper, Neem and clove.
Randomized medical trials are expensive, and pharmaceutical companies aren't exactly incentivized to do them for natural medicines, since they can't patent the result. Absurdly, additional patent capabilities here might actually help reduce that problem.
Actually, there's a shortcut - just read about aspirin.
It's very effective, it has truly medicinal uses, and is (for most folks) "western" medicine.
And it's just tree bark.
so please, once you have a serious condition only take your spices.
no penicilin (or does it count as mold?), no insulin, no aneasthesia for you. just a little cinnamon.
wear glasses or contacts? away with them! a little pepper in your eyes works wonders.
and they wonder why seattle has lower polio vaccines rates than kazakhstan or tchad.
Other browsers will probably have similar options.