A few months ago we had carried this post pointing out how several newspapers had misreported the status of the patent litigation between Kibow and a Gujarati company by the name of La Renon Health Care Pvt. Ltd. At the time we pointed out how several of the newspapers had only pointed out how the IPAB had revoked one of Kibow’s patents without highlighting the fact that the IPAB had actually upheld the more crucial patent. After this initial round of misreporting, we saw the Mint’s Unni carry this report, where as expected, he got the story right.
About two weeks after Unni’s report, the A’bad version of the ToI, the city in which La Renon is located, carried this misleading story with the following headline “Abads pharma firm wins patent battle against US co”. The story claims that “Pharma company La Renon Healthcare has won a patent battle over US-based Kibow Biotech that involved a kidney drug.” Once again there is absolutely no information on how La Renon lost the more crucial battle for Kibow’s product patent.
Such consistent misreporting in the press, while an infringement lawsuit is still pending before the Madras High Court is sure to raise some eyebrows, especially mine. Like they say, ‘Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me’.
