Government’s foolish proposal vetoed by Natco

Readers will recollect an earlier post, where I lamented on a government proposal to have the IPAB decide the Novartis patent matter without a technical member. Thankfully, a sensible Natco has opposed this move. The Hindu reports:

“Hearing on the Novartis AG’s plea to exclude a Technical Member of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) from hearing its statutory appeals against rejection of its patent application was on Tuesday adjourned to November 6 by the Madras High Court.

Proposal opposed

The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice A.P. Shah and Justice V. Ramasubramanian, adjourned the matter after senior counsel for the Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma opposed the proposal to post the statutory appeals before the IPAB’s Bench, comprising its Chairman and Vice-Chairman, and to enable the Chairman to play the role of a Technical Member during the proceedings.

Time sought

Additional Solicitor-General of India V.T. Gopalan, on his part, sought time to get instructions from the Centre. Counsel for Novartis also wanted time to respond to the objections.”

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2 thoughts on “Government’s foolish proposal vetoed by Natco”

  1. Having a Technical member in the IPAB is a very sensible thing. But appointment of a new member in Chandrasekaran’s place is going to be time consuming as there will be a lot of competitors for the post.And knowing the Ministry’s way in such postings its not going to be free and fair. At the most we can expect more delays as senior officials in the Patent Office use their influence in the Ministry to ‘eliminate’ their closest competitor.

  2. Dear Patent,

    All this could have been avoided–had the government not decided, in all its wisdom, to hastily shift the venue of the litigation from the Mad HC to the IPAB. Alas–no point cyring over spilt milk now.

    As you rightly note, these appointments are political and will come with its fair share of controversy (one hopes it will not get stuck, in the way that the Competition Commission membership was!!)–but it seems that, given all other options, this seems the most reasonable one to take.

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