Law and Innovation

Fresh and interesting article from Health Issues India about the next fighting front in the war over intellectual property: Hepatitis C in India: "In recent weeks, the international non-governmental organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced that it supports the ‘patent opposition’ which has been filed recently at India’s Patent Office by the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK). The application aims to prevent US pharma company Gilead/Pharmasset from gaining a patent in India on sofosbuvir, a drug for hepatitis C, which will be launched here soon. Sofosbuvir is the first of several oral hepatitis C drugs expected to come to market in the coming year. It cures hepatitis C in a much shorter time period than today’s available treatment. Gilead is expected to charge around $80,000 for one treatment course of sofosbuvir in the US. As mentioned in this article in the Times of India, even if offered at a fraction of this price in dev...

Supreme Court of India, April 1st 2013. ABSTRACT The Supreme Court of India has rejected a plea by Novartis to patent a prima vacie updated version of a cancer drug Glivec. The court ruled that the new version was only slightly different (practice known as 'evergreening') from the  initial  one. This decision will allow generic drug-makers to continue to sell copies of the drug at far lower prices and ... saving lives. On the second page of the ruling, the Court was at pains to discuss the 'tension' presented in the case, i.e. ' to strike a balance between the need to promote research and development in science and technology and to keep private monopoly (called an ‘aberration’ under our Constitutional scheme) at the minimum. Arguments were made about India ’s obligation to faithfully comply with its commitments under international treaties and counter arguments were made to protect India ’s status as “the pharmacy of the world"'.   ...