The Supreme Court judgment in the Novartis patents case ensures that India will remain the “pharmacy of the third world” and more than 80 per cent of the world’s six million AIDS patients, who are treated with Indian generic drugs, can now breathe easy.
India’s position as the world’s biggest generic drug manufacturer with a $10 billion export market remains safe and despite the threats to the contrary by pharma giants it will continue to be the hub for further research.
China and India together supply 80 per cent of the ingredients and compounds used by all drug manufacturers, so it is unlikely that Novartis, Roche, Merck or Pfizer will leave any time soon said Pratibha Singh, lawyer who navigated the case for Indian generic drug manufacturer Cipla in the Supreme Court. The Novartis case for patenting Glivec in India was thrown out by the apex court for attempts to “evergreen” the product.
“The tendency to keep the patent in perpetuity through repeated application for patents on the pretext of change of some composition or molecule has been rejected by our Supreme Court,” says Pratibha, who is also fighting a dozen other patent cases in courts for generic manufacturers.
The Novartis case is a landmark one, because it was the first case to reach the Supreme Court and tested the eight-year-old patent laws enacted under international pressure in 2005 when India wanted to sign the WTO. The US courts on the other hand permit evergreening as in the case of Sildanefil Nitrate (Viagra) whose patent was to expire in 2012 but was extended on the pretext of a slight composition change till 2020.
India’s low cost pharmacy sector is a saviour for international organisations like the UNICEF and Medicines Sans Frontiers. It is the leading supplier of affordable HIV and tuberculosis medications and is the second leading provider of medicines distributed by UNICEF in the developing world.