By K.S. Jayaraman,

New Delhi, Sep 4 (IANS) The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is squandering public funds on useless patents, allege some of the agency's own scientists.

They claim that India's largest public sector research agency is wasting the taxpayer's money in filing patents in the US on spurious inventions.

The patents inflate the scientist's bio-data for awards and promotions but hardly bring any funds into the nation, they add.

Other CSIR officials, however, insist that it is too early for its US patents to make money and that India must be patient.

Each US patent costs the Indian tax-payer about $25,000 for filing and $4,000 annually for maintenance. Between 2002 and 2005, the CSIR obtained a whopping 542 US patents.

But a data-base search shows that the agency's US patents include frivolous inventions like herbal tooth powder, herbal drinks and "a new method of mixing water with fly ash to make slurry".

In 2002, the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), one of the 40-odd labs under the CSIR, took a US patent (No.6410059) for a substance extracted from cow urine, claiming it enhanced antibiotic activity.

The claim did not pass scientific scrutiny and "has never been substantiated by peer-reviewed publications", U.C. Lavania, a senior scientist at CIMAP, wrote in the Aug 17 issue of the international science journal Nature.

"This kind of activity, which is widespread, diverts millions of dollars from research into filing patents," he complained.

What has surprised critics is CIMAP's extraordinary feat in taking 80 patents in just four years - half of them in the US - on new plant varieties that Lavania says are unlikely to be cultivated in that country.

Top in the list is CIMAP's US patent for a new variety of poppy plant when, according to US embassy officials, cultivation of poppy is legally not allowed in the country, implying that the patent cannot generate any revenue in the US.

"Obtaining a US patent, especially on plant varieties, is an easy alternative to publishing in peer-reviewed journals for high-profile scientists, because money for filing patents is easily available, with no questions asked about the financial viability of the discovery," Lavania wrote in Nature.

Nature even nicknamed CSIR as "India's patent factory" after noting that its US patents exceeded the total number of patents granted to its counterparts in France, Japan and Germany combined.

According to CSIR's chief of patents division R.K. Gupta, not all its US patents turned out to be duds. A cluster of three US patents on a potential anti-cancer molecule has been licensed out to an Indian entrepreneur in the US for $100,000, he said.

CSIR director general Ragunath Mashelkar, whose slogan "patent or perish" propelled the craze for US patents, said it was too early for CSIR to expect big monetary returns considering that only about three percent of all existing US patents are ever licensed.

"For us to be noticed, we need a portfolio of patents. That is what we are creating," Mashelkar added.

But critics, including A.V. Rama Rao - former CSIR director of the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology in Hyderabad, doubt if promoting trivial inventions in order to fatten the patent portfolio is really the answer, considering the cost to the taxpayer.

"As far as I know, not a single US patent has been exploited even in India, let alone in the US," Rao told IANS. "In the name of patents, a lot of money is going down the drain."

"Most of the patents are not even worth the paper it is printed on," said Suresh Chandran, who handled biotech patents in India before becoming licensing manager for a firm in Singapore's Biopolis.

"May be it is a passing phase...but I can tell you that we waste quite a lot on this activity," he said.

Trivial patents for "self aggrandisement" with little commercial value are worrying scientists, not just within CSIR, but across India.

M.D. Nair, a Chennai-based patent consultant to drug companies, said that while there have been technology and know-how transfers to local industries, "it is obvious that no major product has come out of Indian patented inventions in the global context and in global markets".

In a hard-hitting letter to the journal Current Science, published from Bangalore, N. Udupa and colleagues at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education said the time has come "to curb frivolous patents that do not have commercial viability".

Gupta of CSIR said that his agency had been filing a lot of US patents because of its policy "to file a patent on any new finding that meets the criteria for international patent, whether or not we want to commercialise it".

"This policy has been forcing us to take patents even if we know they are not worth it," said a senior CSIR scientist, who did not want to be named. "Many of us file patents because it helps us get promotions and awards."

Critics say this strategy had served the original purpose of creating patent awareness among scientists and now needs a fresh look to ensure that patents create products and wealth and not just statistics.

The only way to do it, said Rama Rao, is for the CSIR to set up an independent division headed by professionals in the place of the existing set-up that just acts as a post office - picking patent applications from CSIR labs and passing them on to attorneys for filing without any rigorous scrutiny of the claims.