Just because companies make drugs, should they aspire to less profits than a firm that makes trendy electronic goods?

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by Narayan Ramachandran for Live Mint
For complete article, click here: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/zqnV2T5dz0XaGITEmSHfqI/Patently-unfair.html

The story of the Supreme Court turning down Novartis’s patent petition for a new and improved Glivec is well known. Less known is that the decision, made on the basis of Section 3(d) of the Indian patent law, is really a technical ruling rejecting the new and improved idea. A patient sympathizer would say the improved notion was merely an attempt by the company to evergreen the drug by extending the patent regime and keeping out generics for longer. A patent sympathizer would say the improved version was truly a more efficacious drug; how is a company to innovate if it cannot protect its innovation? Precisely how a court of law was able to adjudicate on such a technical matter (reasonable experts may well differ) is not clear, but the ruling is binding.
 

The fight is really about the future. It is about how different the future of the pharmaceutical industry will be from its past. It is about the pricing of drugs. It is about how governments will go about balancing patent and patient in a world in which the gap between rich and poor is wide (both within a country and internationally). Could we have a different price for inner city Washington DC, Kenya and India from that in the developed markets? Should the full impact of that differential be borne by the pharmaceutical company or also by the chain of stakeholders—rich consumers, insurance companies and governments? 

India Weighs Price Controls versus Compulsory Licensing

The new draft policy on patented drug pricing puts more emphasis on government regulation.

SHERYL P. DENKER

The Burrill Report

- See more at: http://www.burrillreport.com/article-india_weighs_price_controls_versus_compulsory_licensing.html#sthash.c3sz9UZg.dpuf

The Indian government will consider the use of price controls rather than the controversial compulsory license tool to provide affordable medicines for their citizens, according to a draft guidance issued by India’s Department of Pharmaceuticals.

Under a compulsory license, an individual or company seeking to use another’s intellectual property can do so without seeking the rights holder’s consent, and instead pays the rights holder a set fee for the license. Although rarely put into practice, governments in developing countries have issued compulsory licenses to allow local generic drug manufacturers to produce expensive patented drugs without the consent of the patent holder and then sell those drugs to patients for a price that is much cheaper than the original drug.

In the new draft policy on price negotiation for patented drugs, the Department of Pharmaceuticals says that once patented drugs are regulated by government pricing controls, the provision to issue a compulsory license on the basis of not being affordable will no longer be relevant, since the drug’s cost should be considered reasonable at that point.

- See more at: http://www.burrillreport.com/article-india_weighs_price_controls_versus_compulsory_licensing.html#sthash.c3sz9UZg.dpuf