PROFESSOR Shamnad Basheer joined the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata, in November 2008 as the first Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor in Intellectual Property Law. Before this, he was Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University law school and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC).  He is the founder of several initiatives, including...

The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council has suggested a complex combination of three pricing models to fix retail prices of 348 essential drugs to balance industry's concerns and public health. The proposal, however, has drawn the ire of drug makers who say it is a watered down version of the health ministry's proposals. The council has proposed that for medicines facing "insufficient competition" or a monopoly-like situation, the retail price should...

The medicine price regulator, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), has found a price fixing mechanism suggested by its parent ministry, chemicals and fertilisers, has failed to meaningfully lower the prices of key cancer medicines. A group of ministers (GoM) headed by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is expected to meet soon to finalise a pricing policy on drugs. The NPPA study findings may compel the ministry to seek other effective ways of...

The ongoing debate over the incidence of poverty in India, often assuming surreal proportions, shows that there is indeed a ‘philosophy of poverty’ guiding current economic reforms. The loot of our country’s resources that is taking place both through these reforms, which continue to widen gross inequalities, and through the open plunder of our resources for private gain — as reflected in the series of mega scams — require the legitimacy...

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...