Foreign Multinationals’ Patent Apps to be challenged
Indian Pharma Industry gets aggressive
Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) Secretary-General D. G. Shah says that the Indian industry has decided to collectively challenge frivolous patent applications filed by multinationals.
According to Shah, 86 patents granted to multinational corporations by India for pharmaceutical products since 2005 were not breakthrough drug inventions, but only a minor variation of existing products. Under Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Act, intellectual property claims related to modified versions of known substances are only permissible if it can be proved that the variation has significantly enhanced efficacy. The IPA claims that foreign companies
are filing these applicaitons only to extend the period of patent, commonly known as evergreening, by tweaking the molecules a bit.
