Ranbaxy tops in patents filing from developing nations

Domestic pharma giant Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited has topped the list of patent filers in the area of drug applications from the Third World countries last year with 64 new formulations.

Hyderabad-based drugmaker major Dr Reddy's Laboratories, with 19 drug patent applications in 2002, came a distant second to RLL, according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation statistics.

The two pharma giants were followed by Chennai-based Orchid Pharmaceuticals and Bangalore-based Biocon India with 16 and 10 applications, respectively, during the past year.

The WIPO statistics stated that the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research filed the highest 184 patent applications in the general category from the developing countries.

Recording the mammoth growth rate of 51.9 per cent among the major patent applicants in the developing world last year, India stood third with 480 filings after Republic of Korea (2552) and China (1124) among the patent filing nations from the developing countries under the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

The WIPO--one of the 16 specialised agencies of the United Nations system of organisations--administers 23 international treaties dealing with different aspects of intellectual property protection. The organisation counts 179 nations as member states.

Anyone applying for a patent or registering a trademark or design, whether at the national or international level, is required to determine whether their creation is new or is owned or claimed by someone else.

Four WIPO treaties created classification systems that organise information concerning inventions, trademarks and industrial designs into indexed, manageable structures for easy retrieval.

Regularly updated to include changes and advances in technology and commercial practices, the classification systems are used voluntarily by many countries that are not party to the related agreements.

UNI