-The Hindu     Protesters see attempt by EU to undermine Indian judiciary in the EU-FTA pact People living with HIV, cancer patient groups and public health activists came out on the streets on Wednesday demanding that India reject the European Union's demands in the European Union-India Free Trade Agreement (EU-India FTA) negotiations. The protests coincide with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Germany to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel with the FTA on top of...

-The Economic Times The recent patent rulings in India may get frequently challenged in international courts if the government yields to the European Union's demand of including matters related to intellectual property in the investors-state dispute mechanism in their proposed trade pact, health activist groups have warned. An investor-state dispute resolution mechanism typically allows foreign investors to sue countries for compensation if national laws, policies, court rulings of the country infringe upon...

-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...

-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...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court has denied Novartis a patent for its anti-cancer drug Gleevec. This leaves the door open for Indian pharmaceutical companies to produce their own versions of the drug. Since these are sold at roughly one tenth of the patented brand price, for thousands of cancer patients it means the difference between medicine and no medicine at all. It is not just cancer patients that will benefit, but...