Government’s foolish proposal vetoed by Natco

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Readers will recollect an earlier post, where I lamented on a government proposal to have the IPAB decide the Novartis patent matter without a technical member. Thankfully, a sensible Natco has opposed this move. The Hindu reports: “Hearing on the Novartis AG’s plea to exclude a Technical Member of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) from hearing its statutory appeals against rejection of its patent application was on Tuesday adjourned to November 6 by the Madras High Court. Proposal opposed […]

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US Enablement Case: Relevance for Novartis Patent Case in India

/ By / Patent

Harold Wegner’s timely email updates brought an excellent opinion by Judge Kimberly Moore to my attention. I’ve sat in her court once and she is fabulous (a razor sharp mind combined with a keen sense for the broad policy issues–she’d been an academic prior to her career as a judge). Hal’s email states: “Today in Pharm. Resources, Inc. v. Roxane Laboratories, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2007), (Moore, J.), in her first important pharmaceutical opinion, the newest member of the court authored

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Spicy Tidbits & Events

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Prizes instead of patents for pharmaceuticals Senator Sanders introduced the Medical Innovation Prize Fund Act of 2007 into the US Congress. In essence the idea is to provide a large fund of money to provide government backed incentives (‘prizes’) to help direct pharmaceutical research into needed areas. The aim is to separate innovation from the proce of products. The prizes will be substituted for patent monopolies (though patents would still play a role in who gets each prize). The team

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The Uneasy Alliance between Basmati & IP

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Once upon a time many years ago an evil prince tried to pirate our ‘queen of rices’ – ‘basmati rice’ – but luckily our ever vigilant government challenged the pirates in an adversarial duel (3 years late!) and won back our ‘basmati’ swearing to protect this ‘queen of rices’ from the bio-‘Pirates of America’. ‘Basmati’ – Patents and trademarksI know the above introduction sounds much too over-dramatized, over-romanticized for an IP blog but those sentences are quite accurate of the

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WHY NOVARTIS NEEDS TO CHALLENGE THE MADRAS HIGH COURT JUDGEMENT

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Businesslawyer.in, a fabulous initiative by students of the National Law School of India Univ (Bangalore), my alma mater, carried a short note of mine on the Novartis case. I’ve reproduced it below: “Friends, Indians, Countrymen, lend me your ears; 
I come to bury the Madras High Court judgment, not to praise it. The Madras High Court decided a landmark case involving Novartis’ famed anti- cancer drug, Glivec. Ignoring the bard’s dictum that brevity is the soul of wit, the court

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‘MYSORE MALLIGE’ GETS GI PROTECTION

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karnataka scores once again in registration of a ‘geographical indication’ Of late Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in India have been getting their fair share of bad publicity. Amongst others, the Novartis dispute, as also the yoga patenting dispute were especially damaging to the image of ‘intellectual property’ in the Indian psyche. But as the Prime Minister Dr. Singh (or was it Yeats?) famously said ‘If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’ So true for the world of Indian IP

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SPICY TIDBITS

/ By / Others

SPICY TIDBITS Piracy and a “rare act of intelligence” According to Remix Theory Warner Brothers’ China division, in a rare act of intelligence on the part of a major media company, demonstrated significant savvy last year when they began selling cheap, legitimate, high quality DVDs of movies within days of the theatrical release. By pricing the discs at around 12 yuan (approximately US$1.50), Warner is hoping to make cost a non-issue, thus allowing them to compete in one area where

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S. 3(d) like provision under the proposed “Quality Affordable Medicines Act” in the Philippines

/ By / Patent

According to recent news articles (here and here), the Senate in the Philippines has passed a new “Quality Affordable Medicines Act” (Senate Bill No. 1658) (the text of the Bill can be found here) that seeks, inter alia, to amend patent laws to allow importation of cheaper drugs, support the development of local generic industries, authorize the President to impose price ceilings on life saving drugs (in India, this role is played by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority – for

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Potter-troubles over for Puja organisers

/ By / Copyright

The Delhi High Court has dismissed a petition by J K Rowling and Warner Brothers against a Durga Puja pandal in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area allegedly replicating Hogwarts Castle. In a brief order, the court refused to restrain the Durga Puja committee from using the statues and images of Harry Potter characters during the festival, TOI reports. Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, however, made it clear that the court’s order would be applicable till October 26, saying, “any (further) use of

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NOVARTIS SAGA: MAKING A MOCKERY OF THE IPAB!

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CH Unnikrishnan, a journalist with LiveMint, who is gaining reputation as one of the most sophisticated writers in patent matters reports: “The Union government has told the Madras high court, which is hearing a petition filed by Swiss drug major Novartis AG challenging the appointment of former patent controller S. Chandrasekharan on the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), that it is ready to make a revision in the structure of the board. Novartis is challenging the Chennai patent office’s decision

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