In the last couple of months, the Department of Patent Design and Trademarks has issued patents for at least 40 drug formulas, sources at the Bangladesh Association of Pharmaceutical Industries (Bapi) said.

The local pharmaceutical companies usually manufacture drugs using reverse engineering of the multinationals' products.

"If the multinationals now object to local companies' marketing or exporting these drugs, it is sure to cripple them," Bapi General Secretary Nazmul Hasan, also chief executive officer of Beximco Pharmaceuticals, said yesterday.

Besides, he said, due to the patent protection, the prices of these medicines in the local or the international market will be 15 to 20 times higher than the present ones.

The WTO council on intellectual property rights on June 27, 2002 defined the period up to 2016 as a transitional one, during which the LDCs would not be needed to provide patent protection for pharmaceutical products. It also waived the exclusive marketing right of any new drug of its manufacturer during the period in case of the LDCs.

Nazmul said the multinationals cannot patent their formulas in Bangladesh due to the waiver given to the LDCs under the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). He blamed the local patent officials for their ignorance of the consequences and impacts of patent rights and the latest developments in the TRIPS.

He demanded an immediate executive order to stop patenting any pharmaceutical formula.

But, a senior official at the patent and trademarks office said they have issued patents for the pharmaceutical formulas as per the law, and there is nothing unusual. On average, he said, the patent office issues 300 patents for formulas and products a year and 90 percent of them are held by the multinationals.

On the other hand, Bapi President SM Shafiuzzaman said, "As per the TRIPS, the LDCs including Bangladesh would be able to manufacture and export patented drugs until 2016."

He said the government has failed to reap the full benefits of the TRIPS, as it is yet to revise the Patent and Trademarks Law of 1911 due mainly to bureaucratic tangles, and lack of awareness and participation of the revision-committee members.

The high-level committee comprising representatives from the Bapi and the industries, commerce and law ministries sat several times but failed to finalise the changes to be made in the law.