SpicyIP Positions: 3-year PhD Studentship in the History of Public Health in Modern South Asia

/ By / Others

SpicyIP announces the invitation of applications by the History Department and the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick for a 3-year PhD studentship to investigate an aspect of public health in modern South Asia. The programme, funded by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award, is slated to start in October 2008 and will be supervised by Dr Sarah Hodges. The successful candidate must hold an MA in the History of Medicine or a related field in […]

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Natco vs Pfizer: Joe Mathew Reports on Compulsory Licensing Decision

/ By / Uncategorized

Two days back, we posted on a patent office decision, upholding the patentees’ right to be heard in the Natco vs Pfizer/Roche Compulsory licensing dispute. Joe C Mathew of the Business Standard carries this succinct write up on the decision. I’ve been quoted in this report as stating that: “”I think Natco’s application itself is a weak one as they did not submit proof to suggest that there is a public health emergency in Nepal due to lack of availability

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The Public Funded R & D Bill: Does India need a Bayh-Dole? Part I

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Following Shamnad’s comprehensive overview of the Public Funded R & D Bill, I thought it would be relevant to look at some of the history and some of the present… Given the Bill’s nick name: the “Indian Bayh-Dole”, I started with looking at the history of the US Bayh-Dole to determine how well deserved the nick name is. ☺ I plan a series of posts to (a) compare the situation surrounding the passage of the Bayh Dole Act (BDA) in

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Mysterious Indian "Bayh Dole" Bill: SpicyIP Procures a Copy

/ By / Uncategorized

In earlier posts, we tracked a “secret” Bayh Dole like bill that was being floated amongst the various Indian ministries. We’ve finally laid our hands on this bill and are pasting it below this post. Also, we intend to port this blog to a website soon and bring you a number of IP documents–so as to make this hub a comprehensive one for all things relating to Indian IP. As many of you may know, this blog is a “voluntary”

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SpicyIP Tidbit: The National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill

/ By / Drug Regulation

The Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India has finally announced a draft National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill (NBRA). Unfortunately the link to the draft Bill on the website of the DBT is not working currently. The NBRA has been in offing for the last 5 years i.e. ever since the government had constituted the Taskforce on Application of Agricultural Biotechnology under the chairmanship of Dr. M.S.Swaminathan. The report had urged the government to setup an

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Cipla and Section 3(d): Double Faced Standards?

/ By / Patent

Varun Chhonkar has this great post at Patent Circle, where he highlights two critical Indian patents that Cipla received for a Fosamax derivative (alendronate) and a Nexium derivative (esomeprazole). He questions as to whether the section 3(d) hurdle was as rigorously applied to Cipla, as it is to the various MNC’s, who have, in the recent past, been at the receiving end of this potent section. The Economic Times seems to have picked up in Varun’s post here. Reading the

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Kerala’s IP Policy: Innovative But Deeply Flawed

/ By / Patent

The Indian Express carried an op-ed by me highlighting the fact that although Kerala’s “open source” TK policy is “innovative”, it is deeply flawed. I reproduce the article below: Break with tradition Kerala recently unveiled a rather unconventional ‘traditional knowledge’ policy — set to be one of the few such legislations in the world. Essentially, it seeks to regulate ‘traditional knowledge’ within the state of Kerala — by inter alia providing for some form of ‘property rights’ over this body

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Everything under the "Indian" Sun is Patentable: A Case of Brainwashing?

/ By / Patent

From the comments of a patent examiner speaking at a conference in Delhi recently, it appears that this is indeed the case. Clearly, some of us who thought otherwise need to brush up on our basics of Indian patent law. The Economic Times reports on a patent conference in Delhi recently stating that: “….in yet another step to prove its commitment to entrepreneurial facilitation, Amity Innovation Incubator (AII), organised a day long seminar on “Protecting Intellectual Property Rights,” last week,

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The Draft Manual of the Patent Office & Software Patents

/ By / Uncategorized

The Business Standard recently carried a story on software patents or to be more specific the response by some companies to the question of software patents as deal with by the Patent Office’s Draft Manual on Patent Practice and Procedure which was released earlier this year for comments and suggestions. (The comments received from various stake holders has been posted by the Patent Office on its website and can be accessed here) Legality of the Draft Manual released by the

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Natco’s Doha CL Application: Patent Office Rules in Favour of Pfizer

/ By / Patent

SpicyIP just learnt that the patent office issued a decision in the Natco “Doha style” compulsory licensing application yesterday. See here for a background to this dispute. In short, the dispute revolves around a “Doha style” compulsory licensing application filed by Natco who argued that in view of a public health problem in Nepal, it ought to be granted a compulsory license to export generic copies of Pfizer’s patented anti cancer drug, Sutent (and Roche’s patented drug, Tarceva) to Nepal.

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