India's decision this month to produce Germany-based multinational Bayer's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, in the first use of "compulsory licensing" in South Asia, will save lives but also raises intricate questions. Under the compulsory licensing process, a government can under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules bypass a patent owner's rights after three years and order the manufacture and sale of life-saving medicines at much cheaper cost than by obtaining the medicine from...

Compulsory licence can go a long way to ensure access to cheaper drugs In a momentous development, the Indian patent office issued the ever-compulsory licence in a highly contentious pharmaceutical patent case. The decision is a thumping victory for several patients and health activists who have been fighting what can only be labelled as highly inequitable pricing strategies by multinational drug firms for the past several decades. In August 2011, Natco, an...

The government's decision to bust the price as well as monopoly of Bayer's anti-cancer drug, through the process of compulsory licensing now opens up the field for the generic industry to follow suit and could well pave the way for the availability of cheaper drugs for lifestyle diseases.  More generic companies could invoke the compulsory licensing clause of the Indian Patents Act, following Monday's decision to allow Natco Pharma to sell...

India's use of the compulsory licensing provision under its patents law for the first time to make the patented cancer drug Nexavar available at affordable prices is an essential, although belated step to curb the mounting cost of drugs. The grant of the licence by the Controller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks to Natco Pharma for manufacture of the drug Sorafenib Tosylate (Nexavar) to treat liver and kidney cancer is...

The Swiss-based pharmaceutical giant Novartis is taking the state of India to court in a case that has, after rumbling about in the lower courts for six years, wound up as a very public litmus test of the legal framework sustaining India’s generic drugs revolution.  With the case due before the Supreme Court on 28 March, the fate of millions who depend on affordable Indian medicines may soon hang in the...