In a very interesting copyright case, the Supreme Court of India recently ruled that there can be no copyright in the raw text of court judgments/decisions. Well, we don’t exactly need a court to tell us this, as section 52 (1) (q) of the Copyright Act makes this crystal clear. The real issue before the court was: how much of work ought one to do to on such “raw” judgments to make them copyrightable? Will mere copy-editing (the mere correction …
In March 2007, PUBPAT (Public Patent Foundation) filed formal requests with the United States Patent and Trademark Office challenging four key HIV/AIDS drug patents held by Gilead Sciences, Inc. These patents relate to tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF). Gilead markets TDF in the United States under the brand name VIREAD (and also as a part of its ATRIPLA combination product). As part of its requests, PUBPAT submitted prior art that the Patent Office did not review before granting the patents to …
USPTO Rejects Gilead’s Patents Covering Key HIV Drugs Read More »
Gauri Kamath of Businessworld writes a fascinating article on the CIPLA infringement strategy. See her report here, which I’ve copied below: Launch First, Fight Later “The Delhi high court is currently hearing a high-profile patents lawsuit that has the potential to change the rules of the game in India. In a first, Mumbai-based drug maker Cipla has launched a copycat or generic version of a drug with the full knowledge that the original has been patented in India. The product …
Feroz Ali, who runs pharmapatents wrote to let us know of an error in one of the cases we’d cited in our earlier posts on the captioned theme. We stated that one of the cases that denied a temporary injunction in a patent case (since the patent was relatively new and there was an invalidity attack) is “Periathambi v. Special Tahsildar, AIR 1965 Madras 327”. Unfortunately we got the citation right, but the case name wrong! The name of the …
Roche vs CIPLA: The Law on Temporary Injunctions Read More »
Last year we witnessed the first Indian case of copyright infringement against You Tube which was filed by T-Series. However I’m little surprised as to why there has been only one case against U-Tube so far especially when there have been several instances of copyrighted Bollywood content being uploaded onto You Tube. Americans on the other hand being the litigious society that they are, have been having a field day suing U-Tube for the copyright infringements. The biggest claim is …
Dr Gopakumar Nair, an expert on patent issues and founder of the reputed Patent Gurukul site has sent us some great details on the dates re: the patent applications in the Tarceva case. The dates are very critical to issues such as novelty, time for filing post grant opposition etc. He writes as below: “Indian Patent Application No. 537/DEL/1996 A filed on 13th March, 1996 has been granted as 196774 and published on 13th July, 2007 in the Official Journal …
Readers will recollect our earlier posts on the “pricing” issue in this patent litigation and our plea to disentangle “pricing” from “patentability”. A conflation in this regard will only lead to convoluted patent jurisprudence in this country. Does anyone know what the actual pricing is in the Tarceva case? News reports such as the Hindu and the Mint state the price of Roche’s drug is Rs 4800 per tablet, while CIPLA sells at Rs 1600. I’ve heard however that Abhishek …
CIPLA’s counsel, Arun Jaitley concluded his arguments on the 24th of Jan. The matter will now come up on the 31st of Jan. And all eyes will be on Abhishek Singhvi (counsel for Roche) who will be doing the rejoinder on the 31st and stated in court that he would counter each one of CIPLA’s arguments on invalidity. Singhvi was great on the first day and then withered away after Jaitley came on the scene. We’ll have to see if …
Roche vs CIPLA: Update: The Law on Temporary Injunctions Read More »
An earlier post noted that CIPLA objected to the high pricing by Roche of it’s cancer drug, Tarceva (Erlotinib) and was therefore resorting to the drastic step of infringing its patent. Paradoxically, CIPLA has just been issued a notice by the NPPA (National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority) for allegedly over-pricing its antibiotic, Ciprofloxacin!! Recall our earlier post in this regard titled “CIPLA Milking Indian Consumers: Charity Does Not Begin at Home”. CH Unnikrishnan of the Mint Reports: CIPLA Gets Fresh Notice …
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