Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

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India, South Africa gain from J&J-generic deal, Patent Pool loses out

Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Tibotec has granted multiple non-exclusive licenses for a new HIV-AIDS treatment to generic manufacturers including Hetero Drugs Ltd, Matrix Laboratories Ltd from India and Aspen Pharmacare from South Africa. The drug in question, rilpivirine hydrochloride (TMC278)  is still pending approval however. Tibotec would recieve 2-5% of what is received for the pills. The press release by Tibotec is available here.  The licensing allows the Indian generic companies to manufacture, market and distribute TMC278 in Least Developed Countries, Sub-Saharan […]

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EU-India closer to FTA-hampered public health regime?

Draft IP chapter made available The chapter on IP in the draft EU-India FTA has been made publicly available for the first time. As Malini Aisola has pointed out in her blogpost at CIS, the draft shows India’s rebuff of EU’s stand on several key IP provisions. There is a copy of the draft available here for those interested. [CIS-India has also helpfully compiled a chart comparing the language put forth by India and that put forward by EU, available here]. There seems

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Progress(?) in International Effort to Tackle Pandemics

The  ‘Open Ended Working Group” on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness recently completed its 2nd meeting and has resulted in some breakthroughs in the long standing effort by nations to prepare a framework for tackling pandemics, especially for poorer countries which do not have the capacity to develop or receive vaccinations. As usual, there is a developing – developed country divide on certain issues. [William New of IP Watch has an interview with a key negotiator of these meetings here.] The issue which they’ve

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NBA and MoEF’s (non)working un-CAGed

The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), established for the regulation, conservation and sustainable use of natural resources has recently come under the scanner for its failure in notifying important regulations dealing with access to biodiversity, transfer of results of research and intellectual property rights, even though it was set up back in 2003. The castigating report, was brought out by the Comptroller of Auditor General (CAG) as part of its first audit report of the MoEF. (The NBA is under the administrative

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SpicyIP Tidbit: NGOs set up blog for FTA’s effects on Access to Medicine

Several NGOs have been protesting the free-trade agreements that are being negotiated due to the detrimental effect that these multilateral and bilateral agreements would have on access to medicines. We too have covered the developments on the India – EU FTA in several posts here.  Recently, DNP+ and MSF Access Campaign India have set up a blog for more active discussion on these issues. “The blog was established to gather information like documents, drafts of agreement’s, news, pictures, videos, press releases

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SpicyIP Tidbit: ACTA Final Text released

Thanks to Michael Geist’s tweets and IPKat’s quick follow up, we have news that the final text of the controversial ACTA has just been released, though it’s stated as ‘Subject to Legal Review’.The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia has helpfully posted a copy of the text here. This post is just to announce it’s release so that our readers too can go over it, before we go over it in more detail.

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A round up of international events

Access and Benefit Sharing Protocol adopted at Nagoya.  Readers may remember our post recently on the COP 10 of the Convention of Bio-Diversity that was held at Nagoya, Japan. 18 years of negotiation on the treaty finally concluded with the adoption of the Access and Benefit Sharing Protocol, (Nagoya Protocol) on the 30th of October, 2010. The protocol, as the name suggests, has the aim of preventing misappropriation of genetic resources of countries, as well as providing equitable benefit sharing

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Upcoming CBD meet: Sufficient to narrow the gap?

It’s been nearly 2 decades since the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was adopted in the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and this year, which also happens to be the International Year of Biodiversity, marks the 10th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP). It will take place from 18th – 29th October, 2010 at Nagoya, Japan. The item of primary importance on the agenda at COP 10 is that of creating international protocol on Access and Benefit

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Media goof up over India-EU ‘settlement’ ?

A few posts ago, Prashant had blogged about media reports of a settlement being finally reached in the long-standing India-EU dispute over in-transit drug seizures. Apparently the EU had agreed to amend its laws so that goods in transit could no longer be seized for patent infringement. However, there are a few things a little off about these reports it seems! Firstly, government officials on both sides, Indian as well as EU have apparently expressed surprise at these media reports

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Student groups ask for reconsideration of TRIPS-plus provisions of EU-India FTA

Earlier yesterday, several student organisations including the European section of International Students Access to Medicines Organisation as well as the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, amongst others, sent a letter to the EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht asking for a reconsideration of the EU-India free trade agreement that is currently being drafted. (We have previously written on this agreement here). Incidentally, we are also currently in the week of international action against EU-India FTA – (Oct 4th – Oct 9th)

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