PATENTS, BRAIN DRAIN AND HIGHER EDUCATION 5 is being transacted. The patent laws question under the TRIP negotiations is now central to this discussion on the terms and conditions of technology transfer. Details of this debate in India are available in some of the most recent writings on the subject.3 Briefly, the terms and conditions governing the transfer of technology from developed to developing countries are linked with the nature of the world market for technology and the place that developing countries occupy in that market. Interestingly enough, it has over time been discovered that there is in fact no genuine econonvic market for technology transfer; everything from price to quantity to quality is being determined by the relative bargaining strengths and skills of the negotiating parties rather than by market demand and supply. Here the developing countries face an unequal position favouring the developed countries, and the most aggravating factor of this inequality is the insensitive operation of the intellectual property rights system governing patents and trademarks and legitimized initially by the Paris Convention or the Protection of Industrial Property, 1883. The asymmetry between the developed and the developing countries with respect to the impact of the patent laws has, however, been restricted somewhat by the fact that some sixty developing countries including India are not signatories of the Paris Treaty. But, on the other hand, the Paris Convention of 1883 still governs the policies of a majority of these countries, one amongst the exceptions being India. THE TRIPS PROPOSAL To make these countries fall in line with the rest, the developed countries, on the basis of their overriding bargaining strength, made submissions in the Uruguay Round of GATT in 1986 that intellectual property rights be brought under the purview of the GATT (i.e. General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade) and thereby suggested the establishment of the TRIPs (i.e. trade-related intellectual property rights). Without entering into a discussion on the details of the TRIPs proposal it can be mentioned that a drastic change advocated by it is to abolish the provisions which exclude certain products and processes from protection and to extend the copyright coverage to computer software, data based and related software; and patent protection to pharmaceuticals and chemical processes, and the plant and animal products generated by biotechnology and genetic engineering. The TRIPs proposal basically reflects the fear of the developed-country firms as well as governments that the new technological breakthrough in electronics, information and technology—these being highly human-capital or skill-intensive would be copied or simulated and eventually mastered by the developing countries, at least by those having a variegated structure of higher education and hence an edge in skill formation, such as India, Pakistan, Philippines, Korea etc. An open access to the new technology, the developed countries fear, offers