Author name: Swaraj Paul Barooah

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The problem with the "access to medicine" debate

/ By / Uncategorized

There is, and has rightly been a long and drawn out debate on the price barriers faced by poorer consumers. And for good reason too.  Access to medicines is a phrase that’s come to be thrown around quite often, almost driving it into rhetoric – with people not stopping anymore to think about what it represents. It has come to be used any time there is talk of high priced medicines. And, although it’s most commonly associated with AIDS medicines, […]

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SpicyIP Tidbit: New Guide on Searching for Medicine Patents

/ By / Patent

Tahir Amin (Co-founder of I-MAK) on behalf of the World Health Organization (South-East Asia and Western Pacific Regions) has written a very useful step-by-step guide on searching for patents on medicines. Given that procuring generic medicines is no longer free from IP considerations, this guide could be especially useful in developing countries. The guide is also an attempt at filling the void on material on this subject. The guide, titled “How to Conduct Patent Searches for Medicines” introduces beginners to

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Guest Post: A Defence of Non-Conventional Trademarks

/ By / Trademark

We bring to you an excellent piece covering a portion of trademark law that is not often discussed in India – non-visual trademarks. This post is brought to us by Vatsala Sahay, an enterprising 4th year student of NLSIU. Without further ado: A Defence of Non-Conventional Trademarks Vatsala Sahay Non-conventional trademarks represent an exciting branch of trademark law. While in India, apart from the shape of the Zippo lighter, the Yahoo yodel and the sound mark registered by Allianz Aktiengesellschaft,

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WSJ mixing up issues in Access to Drugs debate?

/ By / Patent

Recently our friends over at Afro-IP brought to light an article by Alec van Gelder in the WSJ on the problem of access to medicines in Africa. While the article is specific to the problems in Africa, its points about lack of infrastructure and diversion of money being major barriers to access are true across almost all developing countries. [Unfortunately the article is only fully available to subscribers.] The article goes on to state that Big Pharma has been made

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Critique of the IPRI reports

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Bibek Debroy from the Indian Express recently carried an article on the International Property Rights Index (IPRI) and India’s retreat from reforms. While the IPRI 2010 report came out a while ago, I only recently got down to looking at it.  The IPRI, which in its latest edition covers 125 countries, tries to present an index of property rights and show a link to a country’s economic prosperity. Coming under 3 heads – Legal and Political Environment, Physical Property Rights

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Access to Medicine groups call for a halt on USTR’s 301 Process

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Since 1988, the USTR has been coming out with its “Special 301” report, a unilateral measure which essentially patronises the rest of the world by ranking countries based on how much the USTR appreciates their IP regimes, and based on those rankings, threatens lower placed countries with sanctions. (See our previous posts on the 301 process here). As usual, TRIPS-plus policies are the ones US considers desirable and are the ones that are promoted. They are considered ‘adequate’, while IP regimes which

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SpicyIP Tidbit: IP-Watch requires help

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As many of our readers may know, IP-Watch is a great source for international IP and IP policy news. They have often served as a terrific resource for us at SpicyIP as well. As they rightly put it, they have “provoked debate, exposed controversies, and helped thousands to access a policy conversation long seen as highly technical and closed.” They usually keep most of their online content free, while ensuring that all of it is free to developing country readers. This morning, they have

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An overview of the ‘Health Impact Fund’ model for accessible medicines

/ By / Innovation

A few quick facts before I jump into my post. US, EU and Japan together account for roughly 90% of the revenues received by pharmaceutical firms, and thus by far, are their largest money generators.  Developed countries comprise of 16-20% of the global population Neglected diseases (or Type III diseases) receive about 2-3% of the global pharmaceutical R&D  Even India, the ‘pharmacy of the developing world’, only 10% of R&D funding of the top 12 leading Indian pharma companies focus

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Patent Pools as Innovation Policy

/ By / Innovation, Patent

A few days ago marked the final step in the establishment of UNITAID initiated patent pool, with negotiations with drug companies expected to start soon. This got me thinking about the viability of patent pools as a concept, in the endeavour to create better, cheaper (or in some cases, just create) drugs for developing country diseases. As a clarification, I do not know exactly what kind of model UNITAID’s patent pool is using. I am simply raising some general questions

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SpicyIP Tidbit: US NGOs go after GWU IP summit too

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Recently we had posted on the controversies surrounding the GWU-CII summit, primarily alleging that GWU had allowed the summit to be used for propaganda by Big Pharma. While Indian civil organisations had written letters to the Minister of Commerce earlier, 9 US NGOs have now also written to GWU calling for a stop to the fronting of biased industry-sponsored training in India. These include NGOs such as Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, MSF, Oxfam, KEI, etc.  Notably, the letter specifically points

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