2008

Roche vs NATCO: India’s First "Doha Style" Compulsory License?

/ By / Patent

Most of you may have heard of the first “Doha” style compulsory license for export of GSK’s ARV drug, TriAvir from Canada to Rwanda. For a great summary of this case, see this ASIL article. Latha Jishnu of the Business Standard reports that a similar request is being made by Natco Pharma, an Indian generic company, to export Roche’s anti cancer drug, Tarceva (Erlotinib) from India to Nepal. The application is for the export of 30,000 tablets to Nepal and […]

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Pills, Potions and IPR:Tales from Folk Medicine.

/ By / Uncategorized

Inspired in content and spirit, by Shamnads’ New Year offerings on Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous medicine with the lush narrative of the Arogyapacha, I add to the ongoing debate and awareness initiatives on the subject….. Allopathy long held as the marquee of the Medicinal systems has close contenders in play. No longer solo on the ramp, Traditional Medicine systems, many of them that predate allopathy have caught world attention. Ayurveda has firmly ensconced a place of pride for itself; inspiring

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Time’s up for Scrabulous?

/ By / Copyright, Trademark

As local news portals trumpet India’s newest homegrown social networking site, http://www.bigadda.com (see here), another Indian company that has achieved near cult status in the global web 2.0 bandwagon faces closure. Scrabulous, a free online gaming site that allows users to play a version of Scrabble, owned by the Kolkata-based Agarwala brothers, reportedly told Fortune that it had received a legal notice from Hasbro (the makers of Scrabble). Hasbro has allegedly sent a cease-and-desist notice for trademark infringement to the

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Roche Patent over AIDS drug in India: Need for Transparency

/ By / Uncategorized

At a conference in DC, I heard a speaker (from a reputed MNC pharma company), who was comparing the patent systems of the US and China lament:“In China, we can never enforce a patent. In India, our problem is that we can’t even get the patent in the first place” If a recent report by CH Unni of Livemint is to be believed, this may not always hold true. Unni dug through the USPTO database and found that the Roche

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Glivec / Gleevec (Imatinib) – Novartis’ many crystalline forms

/ By / Uncategorized

I posted a note earlier in Spicy IP Tidbits about Novartis’ alpha crystalline Glivec (imatinib) patent which has recently come to light. This application was filed back in 2004, before the changes to Indian patent law, and the subsequent (and ongoing) fight with the IPAB, etc.(Click here for a list of earlier posts about Novartis and Glivec on SpicyIP.) For those who aren’t aware, Novartis has other patents covering imatinib in similar ways. Take for example, WO 2007023182 for Delta

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SpicyIP Events – NIIPM Courses – January 2008

/ By / Uncategorized

1. The National Institute of Intellectual Property Management (NIIPM) has organized a Training course on patents at its headquarters in Nagpur, India for 16 and 17 January 2008. NIIPM stated that the course has come about because: “it is observed that the patent applications filed by the Indian inventors and companies, are less as compared to foreign applicants. Hence many Indian inventions are not patented and thus remain unprotected and through ignorance of patent law, many inventors jeopardize the chance

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SpicyIP Tidbits – No Magnum, More Glivec, Namenda Para IVs, & bio-trade in Namibia

/ By / Uncategorized

1. After 15 years, High Court rules, “No use of ‘Magnum’ as trademark”13 Jan 2008, Times of India Allowing a petition filed by cigarette giant ITC, a division bench of Justices S Radhakrishnan and Anoop Mohta recently quashed an order allowing rival GTC Industries to register a trademark for ‘Magnum’. “We are of the view that the word ‘magnum’ is of common usage and purely descriptive,” said the judges. “It can serve as an indication of character or quality or

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Candico’s sticky trademark dispute over its ‘Big Bubble’ chewing gum

/ By / Trademark

The BS reported recently that Candico, the Indian confectionary MNC, lost its long standing trademark dispute with Perfetti – the Italian confectionary major (makers of Mentos) – before the Intellectual Property Appellate Board. Candico is one of the largest players in the chewing gum market in India and has been “making millions of children smile”.The trademark dispute started way back in 1998 with a legal notice from Perfetti to Candico, demanding that the company stop using the words ‘The Big

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FICCI Launches IP Newsletter

/ By / Uncategorized

Over the last few months, FICCI has been becoming more visible in the IP arena. Perhaps it has something to do with the joining of Akash Taneja (ex NIPO person and noted IP expert) as Executive Director and Sheetal Chopra, as Senior Assistant Director. Their latest offering is a wonderful bimonthly newsletter capturing the latest happenings in the IP world in India. The December issue includes snippets on the Bajaj TVS patent dispute, the Novartis case, the Youtube copyright case

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Moral Rights Under Copyright Laws: A Peep Into Policy – 3

/ By / Copyright

As promised, here’s more on the right of integrity under Copyright law. I start the discussion from a slightly dated article referred to in the first post in this series. Mira T Sundara Rajan discusses the right of integrity in her article “Moral Rights in the Public Domain: Copyright Matters in the Works of Indian National Poet C Subramania Bharati” 2001 SING. J. LEGAL STUD. 161. The article discusses the dilemma faced by the Indian government when it realized the

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