This is fairly a new and to say an underdeveloped portion of law in India.The progress in genetic science has the power to cure almost any ailment. Genetic patent law relates to protection of inventions or findings that are gene based, many times this field relates to the medical side of inventions. Although countries like USA and France have leading judgements and development in this field of law, India is still to recognize these kinds of patents in the mainstream view. For a patent to be registered there are certain universal needs that need to be fullfilled. ie-
- Subject Matter - That is the idea or the invention
- Usefulness - To test the usability of the invention
- Novelty - To test the standing of the invention.
- Non - obviousness - That is to say that a reasonable man in the same field wouldn't embark upon such a invention just by daily observations in his field.
Specifications - The specifications of the product must be distinguishable from that of any other invention.Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which was primarily held for the harmonization and unification of intellectual property rights all over the world.In this matter USA has become the first country to unify these laws and give clear indications and series of genetically modified organisms which can be patented.The series which they came up with was:
- Genes
- Genetically modified unicellular organism
- Genetically modified multicellular organism
- genetically modified animals (including humans)
- genetically modified plants
- genetically modified humans
- gene therapy inventions.
Although India has just recognized only two of these fields ie- genes and genetically modified Unicelluar organisms by the way of it's patent manual and suffers from dearth of case laws on such matters and relies heavily on the patent manual,research work on such fields in India is required to cover patents of different types in this field of law.
