Chaff on Basmati

THE CAPACITY OF both Parliament and the Government to obfuscate issues has been on display once again in the heat and dust that has been raised over the U.S. patent to ``Basmati-like'' rice strains developed by a U.S. company, RiceTec. The real issue in protecting this uniquely Indian and Pakistani variety of rice is not the grant of this patent but the place name or geographical indication suggested by the term Basmati. The Opposition is therefore going off on a tangent when it criticises the Government for its inability to have the U.S. patent revoked, while the Government on its part is hiding behind its achievement in having the more important claims on the patent either rejected or withdrawn.

The patent to RiceTec, which is actually a company owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein, was granted as far back as 1997. What the Government of India has indeed been able to do in the years since then is to frame an appeal that has persuaded the U.S. patent office to reject three of the more important claims in the patent, which suggested a novelty about the Basmati-like characteristics of the three rice strains developed by RiceTec. What remain are only five of the original 20 claims about the rice strains. It is to the credit of the Government that it has been able to prevent the patenting by RiceTec of certain properties which are in effect those of Basmati. But that is not enough since it will not prohibit RiceTec and other U.S. companies from marketing their aromatic rice as ``Basmati-like'', ``superior to Basmati'' or ``American Basmati'', which is essentially the misappropriation of geographic indications. Basmati is a classic example of a product whose uniqueness and therefore commercial value is associated with the geographic origins of its production. There are international agreements which prevent firms in one country from marketing products with place names from another country. But a pre-condition for all such protection is that the Government in the country of origin should have registered these place names. The basic problem in Basmati is that India has not yet registered this valuable geographic indication. The Geographical Indications Bill, which provides for such registration, was passed in 1999; but it is a measure of how lightly the Government takes its task that the rules for registration have not yet been notified. Since place names that are not protected are eventually considered generic products, each passing day's delay in opening a domestic registry of valuable place names makes it more and more likely that Basmati will become a generic term that cannot be protected in any foreign market. Indeed, RiceTec and a number of other U.S. firms which are marketing aromatic rice have been arguing that this is the case with Basmati, since they have been producing such rice varieties for close to two decades.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which administers competition affairs, has recently turned down a petition by three non- governmental organisations to prohibit U.S.-grown rice from being marketed as Basmati. This does not mean that the battle to protect the term Basmati in the U.S. has already been lost, since the registration of geographical indications is the responsibility not of this Commission but of two agencies in the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office. It is an unfair world when the burden of responsibility for protecting place names falls on the country of origin and not where the misuse is taking place. Unfortunately, that is how the rules of the world market are now written and if India and Pakistan want to retain their global market for Basmati rice they have to play by these rules. The time that was lost in all that hue and cry about the Basmati patent would have been better used by a constructive discussion on how to protect other geographical indications such as Alphonso mangoes, Kolhapuri chappals and Darjeeling tea.

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