-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government may negotiate prices of patented medicines with their manufacturers before allowing pharmaceutical companies to launch them in India. The move, a first of its kind, is also likely to be applied on patented drugs that are already being sold in the country, an official source said. An inter-ministerial committee, evaluating the mechanism to negotiate prices of patented medicines, has recently sought detailed information about...

-The Hindu New Delhi: While observing that the Court could not encroach into policy matters of the government, the Delhi High Court has dismissed a public interest writ petition seeking directions to the Centre to make available generic medicines and medical treatment to the public at large at a reasonable cost. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice R.S. Endlaw had earlier this week said that the Centre and...

-Vikalp Once again, India is under pressure from the US to revise its patent law. Anyone familiar with the activities of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) would know that this is nothing new. It has been among the USTR's primary mandates to use trade restrictions in order to persuade (to put it mildly) countries to strengthen their IPR laws. There is, however, a qualitative difference between the actions it has...

-The Hindu In a significant development for the pharmaceutical industry, the Supreme Court has rejected multinational Bayer's appeal to block production and sales of the low cost version of its kidney cancer drug, sorafenib tosylate (branded as Nexavar), by Natco Pharmaceuticals. Hyderabad-based Natco was granted the first and to date only compulsory licence (CL) by the government in 2012 to make and sell a patented drug at a fraction of the...

-The Telegraph Regulators in several European countries are suspending marketing approval for 25 generic drugs because of concerns over the quality of data from human studies conducted by an Indian contract research company, a French medical safety agency said on Friday. Drug regulators in Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg have decided to suspend the marketing authorisation for the generic drugs after they discovered "irregularities" in documents relating to human studies conducted by...