Need to focus on GI in fight to reverse Ponni trademark

[Metropolitanjury]

The fate of the famous Ponni variety of rice, nurtured in the fertile banks of Cauvery river across Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, now registered under the Malaysian Trademark Act by Malaysian commodities retail giant Syarikat Faiza, has once again exposed India’s weakness in guarding the IPR of its traditional agricultural produce.

Ponni has not been registered for GI in India. Ironically, the trademark grant would allow Faiza to package any variety that even remotely resembles Ponni, use the brand name and sell it to consumers in the absence of the real Ponni variety in the market in the last few weeks. In the long run, this could damage the Ponni rice brand among its expat consumers and leave the field open for different rice varieties to compete for the brand name.

India’s weakness on this front was exposed first after a patent (and not trademark or GI as in the case of Ponni rice) was awarded in 1997 to the US-based Ricetec for the world’s best known premium aromatic rice, basmati. A loophole in the US patent law allowed patent to a product whose novelty was established, even if it were a discovered, and not invented, product. It took three-and-a-half years, up to June 2000, for the Indian government to get its act together and fight to reverse the patent.

But there could be a twist in the story this time: the requirement under the WTO that countries should dismantle canalising of rice by 2010. Kuala Lumpur’s decision to grant the Ponni trademark could have been dictated by the fact that its state-owned canalising agency has to go out of business soon. It makes sense, then, to grant the trademark to Faiza and route Ponni imports into the country, the biggest Ponni consumer in the world, through it.

The controversy has added immensely to the burden of south Indian rice exporters. They have appealed to the commerce ministry and the Tamil Nadu government to contest the patent — given the existing ban on all non-basmati rice exports. “Ponni rice was selling globally at $1000/tonne before the ban. But there is every likelihood that the price will plunge to $700/tonne by the time the export ban is lifted. All the more so if other similar varieties of rice are passed off as Ponni by anyone who holds the trademark in southeast Asia and the rest of the Ponni consuming expat world. Worse, it could seriously work to the detriment of the Ponni brand of rice from the Cauvery delta,” points out a Chennai-based rice exporter.

By Ms. Bobby Aanand, Metropolitan Jury