WAITING FOR RIGHT DOSE The new policy attempts to foster innovation by giving incentives but it still lacks specifics, while a US drugmaker pushes for joint hearings of patent disputes
India's National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policy announced on Friday lacks specifics and won't be enough to foster innovation, some powerful lobby groups domestic as well as foreign have said.
Some experts said the policy is an attempt to calm the nerves of India's trade partners especially the US but has left stakeholders wanting more.
“From what I have seen and compared to the earlier draft, we welcome the policy.But the national IPR policy is not the end of conversation, but the beginning of it.We see that the policy signals that it is not desiring to address those issues thorny issues which we had expressed. The document is lacking on specifics, there are no details,“ Patrick Kilbride, executive director of the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC), told ET. He said philosophical differences also remain.
The GIPC had put India on a watch list for rejecting a patent for the Novartis' Glivec and for granting a compulsory licence for Bayer's Nexavar, both cancer drugs.
“We need to see the Modi administration's expressed commitment to IP matched by decisive legal reforms. In dia must provide enhanced certainty for the rights of innovators in line with international best practice,“ the GIPC said in a statement.
The framework of the IPR Policy does not bring any major change, save for the investment to speed up the issue of patents and trademark registrations, Novartis India managing director Ranjit Shahani said.
According to him, the policy won't be able to encourage innovation from multinational drug makers. “Companies will invest where the ecosystem for innovation is protected,“ he said.
“There is nothing wrong with the overall framework of the policy, but I doubt that we are going to see a barrage of investments and R&D from global pharma companies now as all investments by the major companies have already been made in China,“ he added.
For Indian generic drug makers, certain provisions of the policy have made them uncomfortable. The government's statement that a “continuous evolution“ of existing laws will be required as and when global trends move forward is particularly unnerving, said DG Shah, secretary general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, a lobby group of domestic drug companies.
“(This is because) it has moved in one direction only, pressured by the developed countries,“ he told ET earlier. According to Shah, the government has tried to assuage the US Trade Representative and Big Pharma by making such a balancing statement, but any change in the legislative framework would hurt both the generic industry and the population, unless the government was ready with funding and programmes to ensure access to medicine for all.
The policy fails to situate IP within the larger innovation ecosystem, argued Shamnad Basheer, founder of Spicy IP, an intellectual policy blog. Basheer was part of the first think-tank that drafted the policy before the government disbanded the committee.
“The entire edifice of the present IP policy appears to be built on this flawed foundation equating more IP with more innovation,“ he said. “Unfortunately, the policy takes a very formalistic and reductionist view of IP...We've lost out on a great opportunity to have a progressive IP and innovation policy.“ The government has said that it will allow compulsory licensing with restrictions in case of public health emergencies such as epidemics.
The Economic Times New Delhi,16th May 2016
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