- India’s Intellectual Property Regime (IPR) has been under attack by the pharma lobbies in the US which have teamed up with other larger lobbies.
- The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) believes that the IPR here is declining and has placed India under ‘priority watch’, but has no far not declared it as Priority Foreign Country (PFC), which would have led to the imposition of trade restrictions.
- The prevailing belief in India is that this is to stifle India’s efforts at providing affordable quality medicine without compromising on existing treaty agreements.
- India’s decision to use ‘flexibilities’ that are available in the existing TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement has also augmented it.
- The flexibilities were however used only twice since its incorporation into the domestic laws in 2005. One when a compulsory license was to an Indian firm for a cancer drug when the patent holder Bayer had overpriced it.
- Second when the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Indian Patent Office of denying Novartis’ patent on a drug as it involved only incremental innovation.
- Additionally, the fear of the big pharma companies that other countries would emulate this has heightened the lobbying.
- India should therefore be ready to tackle any unilateral action by the US and take it up to the WTO for settlement.
- Going forward, India should also focus on improving technology and investments to dispel any questions over the credibility of its IPR regime.
- What works in our favour is that our process of granting patents is elaborate and never arbitrary, also there are very few instances of use of flexibilities.
- The government has also refused to issue a compulsory licence for production of a copy of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s cancer drug Dasatinib in India, despite strong recommendations by the Health Ministry. The argument is that a case has not been made out for producing a generic version of that drug in India.
- The debate should go on. There is a case for having a permanent mechanism for discussing patent-related issues, especially concerning the drug industry.
- Read at: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-business/drugs-affordability-and-patents/article6139944.ece
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