Author name: Madhulika Vishwanathan

Madhulika is a registered Indian patent agent and has completed her Master’s in Pharmacology from the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai. Her interests include issues involving pharmaceutical and biotechnology patent law, regulatory aspects like Hatch Waxman litigation and antitrust law.She is currently working at law firm based out of Memphis, TN.

Indian publisher threatens blogger with 1 billion $ defamation suit: The Streisand effect?

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Disturbing trend we have here with defamation law suits being used to quell free speech and public participation! Last year Shamnad was sued by NATCO for alleged defamation (see his response here) and more recently one of our student bloggers Aparajita received a notice from Times Publishing House threatening legal action for alleged defamation. Prashant’s incisive blog post on this can be accessed here.The story as well as Shamnad’s delightfully sarcastic response to the legal notice served by Times publishing […]

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Drug price control order (DPCO) 2013 : What’s in store?

/ By / Drug Regulation

Last week on Wednesday, May 15 the department of pharmaceuticals issued the new Drug price control order 2013 (can be accessed here) which will alter price regulation dynamics and substantially increase the number of medicines covered by price cap umbrella. The earlier DPCO order regulated prices of only 74 bulk drugs whereas the current DPCO order will regulate prices of as many as 348 medicines. The DPCO 2013 will come into effect somewhere around July 1st i.e. 45 days from

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The curious case of medical method patent: Can doctors patent surgical procedures?

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Around a month ago, the Times of India reported that a Satara-based Gynaecologist Dr.R. S.Katkar had received a patent for microsurgical recanalisation operation. This story made us do a double take! Did the patent office err and grant a medical method patent or was it a case of misreporting by the Times of India? Well, we did a little bit of research on this and turns out that the patent application had just been published in the patent office journal

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Oops! IPO did it again: IPAB pulls up patent office for lack of procedural fairness

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This order has been staring at me for quite some time now and I finally managed to take time out from work to analyze this interesting case! Brief Facts: Vide an order (which can be accessed here), the IPAB upheld the appeal filed by Thomson Reuters Global Resources against the Assistant Controller’s decision rejecting Thomson Reuters’ patent application. The invention of the appellant (Thomson Reuters) is entitled “Systems, Methods, Interfaces and Software for Extending Search Results beyond initial query-defined boundaries.”

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The salt form jinx:Delhi HC denies interim relief to Merck

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The Delhi HC (Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw) refused to grant interim relief to Merck (plaintiff) seeking to restrain Glenmark (defendant) from launching its products Zita and Zita met. We had blogged about it here and here. The High court however kept the main petition of the US firm pending for evidence filing and other legal proceedings on July 16.The order passed on Friday can be accessed here.Following is summary of arguments presented by either side. (Long post warning!)  Image from

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Spicy IP tidbit:Merck files patent infringement suit against Glenmark‏

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Yesterday we had blogged about Glenmark’s brazen move to launch generic version of Merck’s Januvia. As expected, Merck has filed a patent infringement lawsuit agaisnt Glenmark pharmaceuticals in the Delhi high court.Brief details can be accessed here.This will be a case to watch out for sure!It will be interesting to see whether the courts follow the Roche vs Cipla reasoning or have an entirely different take on this altogether. We will keep you posted!

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Patent war intensifies: Glenmark launches generic version of Merck’s Januvia

/ By / Patent

As reported by Rupali Mukherjee of Times of India, in a move which will transform the landscape of the Indian pharma industry, Glenmark has launched a cheaper generic version of pharma multinational Merck’s blockbuster anti-diabetes drug Januvia (Sitagliptin phosphate). The generic vs. innovator battle earlier restricted to anticancer and anti-retroviral meds has now entered uncharted territory; just when you thought things couldn’t get any murkier!  Image from here Numbers and market dynamics:  Owing to obesity and lifestyle changes, India has

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India’s patent policy: Big Pharma’s grouse?

/ By / Patent

In a congressional hearing last week, Roy Waldron, Chief Intellectual Property (IP) counsel of American Pharma giant, Pfizer raised concerns over India’s “protectionist” IP regime. The Capitol Hill testimony can be accessed here.   Waldron alleged that since the advent of the product patent regime in 2005, India has continually defied trade rules and supported the domestic generic industry at the expense of innovators. On the other hand Indian generic industry has increased its US sales dramatically. To quote “Three

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Latest update from Campaign for affordable trastuzumab

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Earlier in Nov 2012, Campaign for Affordable Trastuzumab (an association of breast cancer survivors, NGO’s and health activists) had addressed a letter to the Prime Minister demanding that appropriate measures be taken to ensure that Trastuzumab is made accessible and affordable to the general public. Prashant had blogged about it over here. Shortly thereafter Trastuzumab was recommended for CL by the health ministry and the DIPP is still deliberating the issue of CL.  As reported by Nivedita Menon of Kafila,

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Spicy IP Weekly review (March Week 1)

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Last week started with an interesting post by Anubha about the role of National Innovation foundation (NIF) in boosting frugal technology. She then went on to discuss how NIF helped a farmer, patent and commercialize a frugal technology developed by him. She concluded by noting that NIF launched in 2000, headed by Prof. Anil Gupta of IIM-A had assisted inventors in filing an impressive number of 555 patents.  This was followed by an analytical post by Prashant who discussed a

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