-The Hindu The Supreme Court judgment on Glivec is a blow for a patent regime with a higher threshold of inventiveness On April 1, 2013, the Supreme Court upheld the Intellectual Property Appellate Board's decision to deny patent protection to Novartis's application covering a beta crystalline form of imatinib -the medicine Novartis brands as Glivec, and which is very effective against the form of cancer known as chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). The...
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Shortage of MTP pills, thanks to tighter norms of Food and Drug Administration -Pratibha Masand
-The Times of India MUMBAI: Bhavin Dave was married for six weeks when his wife realized she was pregnant. Both rushed to a doctor, who said the best way to deal with the unplanned pregnancy was to use a medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) drug. She prescribed the pills and that was when their ordeal began. Bhavin (name changed) scrambled from pharmacy to pharmacy with the prescription, but to no avail. He...
More »Most big patented Drugs skip India -Rupali Mukherjee
-The Times of India Big pharma may be crying hoarse over India's "weak'' intellectual property environment, but over the past five years or so, they have introduced only a handful of their patented blockbusters in the country. That's not all. The contribution of patented Drugs in the Rs 72,000-crore pharma retail market is not even 1%, indicating that multinationals have been traditionally slow and have a poor track record in introducing...
More »New mechanism: price of cancer Drugs set to fall -Himani Chandna Gurtoo
-The Hindustan Times Cancer Drugs will cost almost 25% less if the regulator implements a new formula that calls for a price cap. The price regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) is considering a pricing mechanism similar to the one for insulin products - which has brought down prices by up to 40% - for 33 cancer Drugs, most of them generics. Basically, the lowest price from the list of Drugs in a...
More »Patent justice-Sakthivel Selvaraj
-The Hindu Drug patents are designed to create profits that enable more research on diseases affecting millions. But in practice, they have often generated super profits for big pharma companies while erecting access barriers for the poor. The Novartis case spotlights much that is wrong with the system. The rejection of the Novartis petition challenging one of the most progressive tenets of the Indian Patents Act (1970), as amended in 2005 by...
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