Author name: Mrinalini Kochupillai

Kerala Leftists for Copyleft…!

/ By / Copyright

Today, we bring to you a very interesting note by a promising young student, Shashwat Purohit. Shashwat is currently pursuing his LLM at the Franklin Pierce Law Center (Concord, NH). He comments on a slightly dated (March 5, 2008) but very interesting news report in the Indian Express and gives us the basic legal and political background of the Copyleft and Open Source movement. Please do feel free to ask us any questions or details and we’d be happy to […]

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India continues to be on US Priority Watch List

/ By / Uncategorized

The Economic Times reports that India and 8 others have been placed on the “Priority Watch List” this year. India has been on this list for a number of years and its continued inclusion does not come as a surprise. Readers will recall that Jayant (Spicy IP) had covered India and Thailand’s inclusion on the Priority Watch List in a detailed post last year, and had pointed out that “A country wise analysis of countries in United States Trade Representative

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CIPLA, LDCs and Parallel Importation: Interesting Times Ahead?

/ By / Patent

Mr. KS Jayaraman, Nature Correspondent, recently brought some interesting information to my attention: CIPLA has set up a manufacturing unit in Uganda and plans to set up another one in Morocco soon. While I haven’t found a news item corresponding to CIPLA’s plans for Morocco so far, I did find a news item from October last year, where the BBC reported that “Ugandan drugs importer Quality Chemicals will produce the medicines locally with Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla, one of the

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SPICY IP TIDBIT: CIPLA Strikes Again!

/ By / Uncategorized

CIPLA, after its recent victory in the Delhi HC is all inspired to spread its wings out further. As per a recent report in The Hindu, CIPLA is all set to sell a generic version of Deferasirox. Deferasirox, originally a Novartis drug, is sold internationally under the Exjade brand name and is useful for treatment of iron overload that occurs due to blood transfusions. It is therefore particularly useful for patients suffering from thalassemia and other such conditions. As per

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Dancing to a New Tune: Permanent Injunction by the Madras HC on Staging Dance Ballet

/ By / Copyright

Most of you may have read the recent report in The Hindu about the Madras High Court’s permanent injunction in the Dance Ballet case. My apologies for the delay in covering this… the reason for my tardiness is that I wasn’t able to get my hands on a copy of the judgment – I still haven’t gotten it, but am basing the below legal analysis on the facts that I could gather from various sources, particularly the report in The

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MNCs and Patent Applications: The Tip of the Iceberg and the Iceberg itself

/ By / Patent

According to a news item that featured today in the Business Standard, the Novartis and Roche controversies may just be the “tip of a huge iceberg.” According to the report: “358 of 413 drug patent applications for the disease in India are from top multinationals. A city-based policy research group has found that multinational drug firms have filed over 350 patent applications for drugs used in cancer treatment. An analysis of pharma patent applications pending with the patent office by

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SpicyIP Interview with Dr. Samir K Brahmachari

/ By / Others, Patent

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Samir Brahmachari, the new Director General of CSIR. It was a pleasure to see the enthusiasm with which he spoke about his open source drug discovery model and his plans for the growth of CSIR. Given all the media attention that his OSDD has already received, I thought it would be best to dig a little deeper into the model. We provide not just excerpts from his interview, but also excerpts

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SPICY IP Tidbit: WHO Report on TRIPs Flexibilities and Access to Medicines in Thailand

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In WHOs recent mission to Thailand saw the release of a 31-page report entitled “Improving access to medicines in Thailand: The use of TRIPs flexibilities.” According to a recent news item, the report “provides technical information and policy options on the general rules and mechanisms available to countries for use of the flexibilities contained in the Trips and other international agreements, in order to promote greater access to pharmaceutical products.” The report specifically highlights the flexibilities in the TRIPs agreement

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The Competition Act, Patents and Over Hyped Drugs – Part III

/ By / Competition Law, Patent

Lets start today with an overview of some of the sections of the Competition Act that might have a bearing on any patent related competition issues: Chapter II of the Act proscribes Anti Competitive agreements including tie-in arrangements, exclusive supply agreements, exclusive distribution agreements, refusals to deal and resale price maintenance. Sub-section (5) of section 3 however provides (inter alia) that the section shall not be read to restrict the “right of any person to restrain any infringement of, or

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The Competition Act, Patents and Over Hyped Drugs – Part II

/ By / Competition Law, Patent

Before taking off from where I stopped yesterday, I must thank V. Ramachandran of V.R. Associates for informing me that the Competition (Amendment) Act, 2007 has been passed and sections 1, 2, 6 to 9, 11, 12, 17 to 18, 27, 29 to 30, 32, 40 to 49 (except sections 53B to 53U) were notified on 12/10/07. Now to continue… A report I submitted to the NHRC in 1999 looked at prices of insulin (a life saving drug) in India

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