The Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) that represents researched based national pharmaceutical companies recently launched its website: www.ipa-india.org.
As Mr. D G Shah, Secretary General, IPA states “The website provides plenty of information and data on diverse subjects. Be it pricing, patents, drug regulatory regime or role and contribution of the national pharmaceutical industry to the economy. It shares IPA presentations at various fora and position papers on many subjects. Its rich content will help you to source various information related to the Indian pharmaceutical industry. You can watch videos and read articles on key issues and refer to recent important news items relating to pharmaceutical industry.”
The website, a laudable initiative, is neatly categorized, simple and uncluttered. It has various sections including information on the activities of the IPA (an IP Cell; a campaign against spurious drugs and a quality forum). It also has a section dedicated to position papers, articles, sponsored studies, presentations and videos. Since the website contains such information, a search option, though currently missing, would be a beneficial tool.
Are you serious? The launch of a new website by IPA now makes news on SpicyIP! At least try to keep the image of being unbiased or do you guys do not care any more?
Are you serious? The launch of a new website by IPA now makes news on SpicyIP! At least try to retain the image of an unbiased blawg or do you guys not care anymore?
Dear anon,
Whether you agree with them or not, do let us know if you think the policy positions of IPA are irrelevant, or if you think they’re considered irrelevant when they’re used anywhere. And if you’re calling us biased (towards generics presumably? hard to tell when both sides of this artificially formed table like to call us biased towards the other) please also feel free to state your own affiliations.
On the same note and more usefully, if you have any other resource which you think is valuable to share, please do send it across to us as well.
I agree with the last part of your comment. That’s my only grouse – SpicyIP is increasingly only representing one side of the story. Please do talk about the IPA website but also mention the PhRMA website which also contains policy positions on IP and pharmaceuticals.
I recently read a comment on the injunctions series that SpicyIP wishes to bring out the harm to the Defendants by such injunctions. It appears from the comment that Plaintiffs cannot suffer irreparable harm since everything can be compensated by costs. Swaraj, I am sure you know through your vast knowledge on the subject (no sarcasm here) that this is not necessarily true – Plaintiffs do suffer irreparable harm but none of your posts even consider or refute the Plaintiff’s claims in such cases.
Dear Anon,
We’re always happy to engage with disagreements, and when both sides put forward arguments on merit, its often very constructive. But I do take issue with 14 separate people (constituents of SpicyIP) being labeled as biased by a reader because of a disagreement. Please keep in mind that this is a group of people who are volunteering their time to engage with these issues on a public forum, with their own affiliations and names out for everyone to see, something very few others are even willing to attempt.
Separately, we’ve always been encouraging of guest posts, especially when they counter positions that have been taken by any of our authors. If there’s something in particular you have an issue with – if you find the comments section to be unfruitful, I’d like to encourage you (or anyone interested) to please send us a guest post, expanding on your thoughts/reasoning. You can mail it to [email protected]; these can of course remain anonymous as desired. Same thing goes for tips/updates on IP developments in general.
In relation to this post: The news here is that an Indian pharma body has launched a new website. IPA is also one of the few Indian bodies (that I know of at least) that go around the world giving their inputs and policy stances. I think it’s quite relevant for everyone, whether they agree with it or disagree with it, to know what exactly what position and reasoning IPA is taking everywhere. i.e., it is both new and news worthy.
PhRMA’s website is old. For the same reasons that we haven’t mentioned others such as KEI, i-Mak, etc. in this post.
On the 2nd part, I agree – Plaintiffs as well as Defendants can suffer harm. That both/either parties can suffer inconvenience and harm is amongst the reasons that it would make sense to dispense with the (often unduly spread out) interim phase in complex patent cases (not all patent and not all IP cases), along with mandating an expedited trial, along the lines of, say, what Katju prescribed in Bajaj v TVS.