India is coming under increasing pressure from the U.S. and the European Union for the strict patentability criteria it applies for medicines. AS was only to be expected, the two landmark decisions made by the Indian patent office in recent times concerning pharmaceutical patent cases have not gone down well with the multinational drug industry. First, there was the rejection in 2006 of the patent application by the Swiss multinational...

Industry reacts with caution to the grant of a compulsory licence to Natco, but cancer patients welcome it and hope for many more. THE first compulsory licence (CL) issued by the Indian patent office, to the local drug manufacturer Natco Pharma Ltd to sell the generic version of Bayer AG's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, has led to varied reactions. The landmark decision has also raised concerns about the outcome of cases...

-PTI The Centre today told Supreme Court that habitual offenders detained under special preventive detention laws cannot invoke the jurisdiction of the Right To Information(RTI) Act to know the grounds for the action against them. Appearing before a three-judge bench of justices Altamas Kabir, Gyan Sudha Mishra and J Chalameshwar, Additional Solictor General P P Malhotra said the RTI Act was not available to suspects as the legislation was subordinate to...

The latest Majithia wage board has recommended that salaries be increased, in some cases to 200% of prevailing rates The Press Trust of India, or PTI, India’s largest newswire, will be shut for about 30 hours from Saturday as its employees go on strike to protest the non-implementation of the wage board recommendations to significantly increase their salaries. The Federation of PTI Employees’ Unions said in a notice that the employees will...

NOVARTIS has long been suing the Government of India to eliminate or weaken Section 3(d) of the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005, which established strict standards of patentability in order to prevent the ever-greening of patent monopolies on medicines. Although Novartis lost in 2007 its initial efforts to have Section 3(d) declared unconstitutional and violative of international norms for national patent regimes, it has persisted in appealing and re-appealing the denial...