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Thursday,
September 5, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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New
patents law within 10 days HCL
Infosystems earns Rs 40 crore profit
Signature
campaign against defaulters Indian
exports up 18 pc Now play
KBC from home through SMS |
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Ranbaxy
targets $ 1 b sales Centre
clears plan to set up 1,000 ITIs ‘Govt
not serious on VAT’ Kumar
Birla 8th youngest billionaire
Hewlett
grabs 54 pc of storage market
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New patents law within 10 days
New Delhi, September 4 "The subordinate legislation or rules of operation of the Second Patents Amendment Bill will be notified within 10 days," Mr A.E. Ahmed, joint secretary in the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) told reporters on the sidelines of the fourth WIPO Asia Pacific Regional Forum meet here on Wednesday. The forum is part of a regional initiative to facilitate a dialogue among countries on issues pertaining to intellectual property rights (IPRs) to enhance understanding and awareness. Representatives from several countries like Sweden, the USA, Singapore and China will make presentations at the three-day forum to share their experiences and outline a public outreach strategy. The second amended patents legislation, passed by Parliament in June, provides for changes in the scope of patentable inventions, grant of new rights and extension of the term of protection of patents. An important component of the new law is a provision for the placement of burden of proof on the guilty party rather than on the patent holder in an instance of process patent infringement. The new law also specifies the conditions for issuing compulsory licences. To comply with its WTO obligations, India has introduced several reforms by way of amendments to its existing trademark legislation. The long-awaited implementation of the new Trademarks Act, which was passed by Parliament and notified in December, 1999, is yet to happen though. "The trademark law will come into operation once the chairman of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board has been appointed, as the notification has already been issued," said V. Govindarajan, secretary, DIPP. With the modernisation of some of the patent offices in the country, the process of granting of patents has been speeded up considerably, said the official. India is also mulling a new legislation for the protection and management of traditional knowledge or intellectual property, Govindarajan said. A special committee is working to set up a digital library of traditional knowledge, folklore and genetic resources, which will be formally launched in December. This will pave the way for the protection of India's wealth of traditional intellectual property in plant and animal materials, according to an expert.
IANS
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HCL Infosystems earns Rs 40 crore profit New Delhi, September 4 Announcing the audited results of the company, Mr Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman and CEO of the company said “stable performance by the company, has due to our continued commitment towards quality and service”. For the quarter ending June, 2002, the company registered a
turnover of Rs 402.6 crore against Rs 250.9 crore during the corresponding period of the previous year. The business strategies adopted by the company to tap new market have shown encouraging results.
Net telephony devices
HCL Infi Net today launched Internet telephony devices. The “Yap” (Your alternative phone) and Yap Jack Plus — exclusively designed devices for voice calling — will remove the bottlenecks in Internet telephony like voice breaking due to network congestion, the company claims. Using the Yap phone, calls can be placed from a PC or phone and routed over the Internet by HCL InfiNet managed IP network. The Yap phone is available for Rs 1,665. It includes a Rs 750 card, 50 hours of usage time and a free dialler CD with various software games and utility. The product can also be purchased at Rs 1,175. The Yap Jack Plus offers an inbuilt modem and allows dial up Internet users to make low cost international phone calls without using a PC.
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Signature campaign against defaulters Chandigarh, September 4 This was stated by Mr Naresh Gaur, General Secretary, Punjab Bank Employees Federation (PBEF) here today. Addressing a state level rally of bank employees, he said that about 50,000 bank employees would gather at Delhi to press upon the Parliament to pass the legislation against the defaulters at the earliest. Later a delegation would also meet the President, Abdul Kalam to seek action against defaulters. The rally was held as part of the nation-wide campaign on banking industry’s health. Later, the PBEF released a list of top 50 defaulters of the banks, which owed more than Rs 18,000 crore as on March 31, 2001. The union leaders claimed that the total NPAs had crossed Rs 1.5 lakh crore during the past one year. The list of defaulters included industrial groups like Lloyds Steel Industries (Rs 1008.95 crore), Amar Dyechem (Rs 978.16 crore), Parkash Industries (Rs 409.66 crore), Mukerian Papers Ltd (Rs 161.90 crore), Arihant Industries Ltd (Rs 395.82 crore), JCT Ltd (Rs 325.26 crore), HM Proteins Ltd (Rs 838.79 crore), International Ceramics (Rs 696.55 crore), Nova Corporation Ltd (458.43 crore), Rajindra Pipes (Rs 620.08 crore), Mafatlal Eng Indus (Rs 457 crore), Mysore Petrochemical Ltd (Rs 303.93 crore) and Dunlop India Ltd (Rs 173.53 crore). The leaders claimed that other defaulters, which owed more than Rs 100 crore, also included Foremost Ceramics, Pearl Polymers, Binny Engg Ltd, MS Universal Exports and NEPC Agro Industries Ltd.
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Indian exports up 18 pc
Bangalore, September 4 “This year, export is looking up”, Rudy told reporters here, noting that in 2001-02, the country’s exports registered a negative growth. India’s exports were specifically oriented towards the US, EU and Japanese markets but now the country had started focussing on Latin American and African markets, he said. African countries, which have agrarian economies, are looking up to India for products, equipment and technology, he said. Regarding rubber, he said India was currently engaged in a dialogue with the WTO seeking to declare the commodity as an agriculture item so that its bound rates could be increased. He said coffee industry was passing through an unprecedented recession with glut in the international market, and listed the various measures initiated by the government to ameliorate the condition of growers. The government is considering a proposal to set up price stabilisation fund of around Rs 500 crore, he said. A committee, headed by Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce
L.V. Saptharishi is working out modalities for such a fund, and it is slated to submit its report in October.
PTI
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Now play KBC from home through SMS Mumbai, September 4 In its new interactive format, christened ‘The Best of Kaun Banega Crorepati’, viewers above the age of 18 who wield a cellphone can play the game along with the celebrity-contestant on the hotseat, said Star India Chief Operating Officer Sameer Nair. The show will be aired at 8 p.m. every Friday for 16 weeks. The contestants can register themselves by sending an SMS to Star at 7827. Once registered, the participants can listen to Amitabh Bachchan’s question to the celebrity on the hotseat and SMS the answers, mentioning the correct option — ‘KBC A’ or ‘KBC B’ and so on. Ten persons sending the correct answers first will win Rs 1 lakh each and they would be notified the same night, a release said. The first episode of this ‘comeback KBC’ show will open with Shah Rukh on the hotseat, followed by Rani Mukherjee and others. After 16 weeks, successful SMS participants can win 10 per cent of the amount won by the contestant on the hotseat. That is, if the contestant sitting with Amitabh wins Rs 50 lakh, the SMS winners will get Rs 5 lakh each, it said. KBC SMS can be sent via cellular networks such as Orange, Spice, Escotel, Hexacom, RPG and ADL, it said. KBC, discontinued after 305 episodes, had disbursed Rs 26 crore by way of prize money, it added.
UNI
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Ranbaxy targets $ 1 b sales
New Delhi, September 4 Focusing on the US market for achieving the target of $ 1 billion sales, Ranbaxy chief D.S. Brar told reporters, “we are looking at a major production facility in the USA for the simple reason that the USA accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the world’s pharmaceutical market.” Keeping this in mind, the company has strategically shifted its geographical business mix. In 2001, 19 per cent of business came from the US market while in the first half of
2002, Ranbaxy got 35 per cent of $ 355 million business from the USA. Projecting a total pharmaceutical market worth $ 530 billion, Brar said the US market constitutes $ 240
billion and nearly 50 to 60 new drugs hit the market every year with 10 per cent of this becoming blockbusters or which have potential of over $ 1billion mark.
PTI
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Centre clears plan to set up 1,000 ITIs New Delhi, September 4 Regretting the delay of three years in holding the NCVT
meeting, the minister said it would now meet regularly after each quarter to review the vocational training scenario in the country. The minister also announced the reservation of seats for OBC candidates in admission in IITs at par with reservation available to them for employment in government service in their respective states. He said the government had accepted the recommendations of an expert group regarding the reservation of 3 per cent seats for the people with disability.
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‘Govt not serious on VAT’ Chandigarh, September 4 These views were expressed by industrialists here today at a seminar on “Value added tax — the road ahead”, organised by PHDCCI. The seminar was inaugurated by Mr Sardul Singh, Minister for Excise & Taxation, Punjab. Mr N. Venkatakrishnan, Manager, Hindustan Lever said: “the state governments are making drafts in which they are promising the VAT provisions only for their own units. Neither they are ready to refund the central sales tax (CST) nor to abolish the exemptions granted to different units. In such a scenario, the whole purpose of VAT would be defeated as manufacturers in Punjab would not be able to compete with their counterparts in other parts of the country. They would have to pay CST on imported raw material and would not be able to get any refunds for the material sold in other states.” Releasing the proposed design of VAT in Punjab, Mr Sardul Singh announced the formation of VAT Implementation Committee for Punjab for smooth transition to the VAT system. Mr Suresh Kumar, Excise and Taxation Commissioner, said Punjab would have a revenue neutral rate between 12.5 and 12.75 per cent. He claimed though the state was in favour of abolition of CST, but the Centre would have to compensate the states for the annual loss of Rs 16,000 to Rs 18,000 crore in lieu of CST losses. Most of the participants were sceptic about government’s intentions to implement the VAT in its true spirit. Mr Ashok Khanna, Chairman, the Northern Regional Development Council, also addressed the seminar.
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Kumar Birla 8th youngest billionaire
New Delhi, September 4 Fortune has compiled a list of 40 richest people under 40 years of age and Birla is the only Indian among the top 10 billionaires, according to a statement here. The list throws up another surprise: as many as 13 Asians make the grade with three billionaires from Japan, India and Hong Kong in the top 10 and baby moghuls from China, Fortune said in a statement here. The world’s richest under 40 billionaire is Russian oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky with $ 7.2 billion to his name, followed by Swiss Ernesto Bertarelli with $ 4.7 billion. Also, the only woman millionaire in the United States is “pretty woman” Julia Roberts with $ 145 million to her name while the lone woman outside the US who made it to the Fortune list is Mexican Maria Asuncion Aramburuzabala with $ 1.5 billion. “Today, mere millionaires stand no chance of making the list - it will take $ 136 million to just match Wang Yusuo (at number 40) while $ a billion will only just scrape into the top 15,” the statement. “This is the fourth year that Fortune has produced the list of America’s 40 richest under 40 and the first time we have extended this important franchise internationally. With the exception of Michael Dell, it is interesting to note that there is more young money outside of the US than within — with more billionaires under 40,” International Editor of Fortune Robert Friedman said. Michael Schumacher is the only mega-rich sportsman with $ 700 million in the international list whereas the us has fielded basketball Superstar Michael Jordan (408 million), Brad Pitt (127 m) and Andre Agassi (120 m). In the US list, Fortune pegs computer magnate Michael Dell as the richest American with $ 16 billion, which is higher than wealth of the other 39 respondents combined. The statement says “due to difficulties assessing personal wealth, not to mention lack of collaboration by many, some worthy inclusion may have been missed out or cut. Others were excluded because, although they had inherited their wealth, they weren’t working to improve their legacy”.
PTI
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LIC Jalandhar Div Uco Bank Amartex IDBI-Principal ABN Amro Bank BHEL bags order Beltek India J.B. Aluminium Honda Motors Goodlass Nerolac |
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