2012

Tracking the inventors of Ranbaxy’s new anti-malarial drug

/ By / Innovation

A photograph of a few of the inventors, sourced from the MMV website. As discussed by Akshat in his guest post over here, the main invention in Ranbaxy’s new combination anti-malarial drug is the new chemical entity (NCE) by the name arterolane. While reading the several news reports on Ranbaxy’s new FDC anti-malarial drug, Synriam, I was quite surprised that nobody in the Indian press even bothered to mention the names of the inventors. This is in sharp contrast to […]

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USTR 301 Report surprisingly restrained on Bayer CL decision

/ By / Uncategorized

The Annual 301 Report by the United State Trade Representative (USTR) has recently been published by the Office of the USTR and can be accessed over here. Predictably, the USTR has once again put India on its ‘priority watch-list’ for poor compliance with the standards of intellectual property law expected by the U.S. The USTR 301 reports are usually quite aggressive in demanding higher standard of IP protections from all countries regardless of the domestic priorities of these individual countries.

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An Introduction to the recent Frontline issue on Indian Patent Law

/ By / Uncategorized

Frontline, in a series of articles its recent issue, discussed the recent developments in Indian Patent Law and its reverberations in the pharmaceutical industry and public health [ ‘Patent to plunder’ by Amit Sengupta, ‘A big step forward’ by C.P. Chandrasekhar, ‘Patents and the law’ by V. Venkatesan, ‘A welcome first’ by T.K. Rajalakshmi, ‘Western warnings’ by R. Ramachandran, ‘Question of efficacy’ by Leena Menghaney, ‘The current patent system is deeply flawed’, interview with Prof. Shamnad Basheer and ‘Drug and

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IPAB releases Annual Report on World IP day

/ By / Uncategorized

In a welcome first, the Intellectual Property Appellate Board has published its Annual Report on its website on April 26th which is recognized as World IP day. It also gives us an important wrap-up of the milestones in the last year. I don’t think the IPAB has ever come out with such a report in the past. The report can be accessed over here. (Image: Logo of the IPAB)  Some of the important milestones, as extracted from the report, are as follows: 

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Guest Post: The story behind Ranbaxy’s new drug

/ By / Innovation

Pursuant to my last post on Ranbaxy’s new anti-malarial drug, I received a few comments indicating a certain level of confusion about the exact nature of Ranbaxy’s invention. I therefore requested Akshat Rathi, a doctoral student in chemistry at the University of Oxford, to write us a guest post tracing the evolution and nature of Ranbaxy’s invention. Akshat also writes at the Allotrope, a blog focussed on the impact of science on society.  The story behind Ranbaxy’s new drug  By, 

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Ranbaxy’s new anti-malarial drug: A first for India?

/ By / Innovation

The last few days have witnessed at least a dozen news reports on the launch of Ranbaxy’s new anti-malarial drug – Synriam. Several of the news reports such as the one over here and here give the impression that this drug launch is the first of its kind in India. The Business Line report in particular claims that Ranbaxy has spent invested $30 million to develop this drug. A part of this claim can be traced to Ranbaxy’s press-release which

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Statutory licensing for radio stations to be dropped from Copyright Amendment Bill, 2010?

/ By / Copyright

The Times of India & the Economic Times have both reported that radio stations are opposed to any move by the HRD Ministry to do away with the proposed ‘statutory licensing’ provision in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010. It is not even clear whether the Ministry has actually proposed such a move. Image from here. As per Section 31 of the Copyright Act, 1957 a compulsory licence for broadcast could be issued by the Copyright Board only if the works

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Spicy IP Tidbit: ‘Bold strategies for Indian Science’ by Prof. Gautam Desiraju

/ By / Innovation

One of the recent issues of the international weekly journal of science, Nature, carried an interesting and witty article on the state of Indian science. The article titled ‘Bold strategies for Indian Science’ by Gautam Desiraju, a Professor of Chemistry, at the prestigious Indian Institute for Science (IISc.), Bangalore. The article can be read over here. (Image from here) In this article, Prof. Desiraju laments at the slow progress of Indian science; on how India has not produced a single

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World IP Day: A Natural Take

/ By / Innovation

SpicyIP wishes all of its readers a very imaginative IP day. Each year, we’ve commemorated this occasion with a short note, and also offered up a new SpicyIP product (a database/website etc) for public consumption. This year, we bring to you an exclusive IP writing competition titled Pondering IP (PIP). This competition is organised under the aegis of the Ministry of HRD Chair at WB NUJS, but in collaboration with IPTLS (a student run IP society at NUJS) and SpicyIP.

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Kenyan Court holds Anti-Counterfeit Act unconstitutional

/ By / Uncategorized

UNAIDS Executive Director welcoming the decision A couple of years ago we had blogged about the controversial Kenyan Anti-Counterfeit Act that had been passed in 2008. At that time, I had written that its broad definition of counterfeits would include generics and would be severely problematic: “The problematic part of the legislation is that it recognises intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical products registered in any part of the world and not just in the country of export or import….  The legislation

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