-The Telegraph Swiss pharma company Novartis today told the Supreme Court that if it gets an Indian patent on its anti-cancer drug Glivec, it would continue giving free drugs to 85 per cent patients till 2018 provided prices were left untouched. But the court described its scheme of classifying people on the basis of their incomes as “too complicated” and again urged the company to reduce prices. Whatever the scheme, the end result...
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Anti-corruption cartoonist arrested for sedition in Mumbai -Vijay V Singh & Rebecca Samervel
-The Times of India MUMBAI: Kanpur-based cartoonist Aseem Trivedi (25), who surrendered to the BKC police on Saturday, was remanded in seven days' police custody by the Bandra holiday court on Sunday. Charged with sedition for insulting national symbols through his cartoons, he refused to engage a lawyer in protest. The cartoons in question are on the theme Cartoons Against Corruption and one of them depicts the national emblem as comprising...
More »Cipla wins patent case over Tarceva -CH Unnikrishnan
-Live Mint Cipla Ltd won a landmark patent case against Swiss drug maker F Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd in the Delhi high court on Friday over the Indian company’s generic copy of lung cancer drug Tarceva after a four-year court battle. Justice Manmohan Singh observed in his 280-page judgement that it had been scientifically proven that Cipla’s generic version was a polymorph B variant of Roche’s patented drug and that it didn’t actually...
More »Patients lose out to patents & profits -Deepa Kurup
-The Hindu A 2012 WHO study ranks India third — behind Myanmar and Bangladesh — among countries that fail to provide health cover to people. A 2011 study reported in The Lancet on ‘Healthcare and equity’ confirms this: every year, at least 39 million people here fall into poverty due to private out-of-pocket health expenditure. A vast majority of Indians do not have access to healthcare or essential drugs. By the...
More »Natco targets drugs ripe for compulsory licensing-Viswanath Pilla
-Live Mint Natco Pharma Ltd, which has started selling a generic version of Bayer AG’s patented cancer treatment Nexavar in India at a fraction of the price charged by the German firm, plans to use the so-called compulsory licensing route to try and win the right to copy more patented drugs, said vice-chairman and chief executive officer Rajeev Nannapaneni. The Hyderabad-based company has already identified the patented drugs for which it will...
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