Monday, November 05, 2012

India overturns another patent ... this time from Roche!

India appears to be taking on the first world’s pharmaceutical industry, with the third decision this year against a major pharma company – this time the Switzerland-based Roche Pharmaceutical Group.

In what was described as a victory for patients’ groups, India’s Intellectual Property Appellate Board revoked a patent granted in India to Roche for pegylated interferon alfa-2a, which is used to treat Hepatitis C. The patent, granted in 2006, was the first such patent on a medicine under the new TRIPS-mandated product patent regime for medicines as part of the country’s obligations under World Trade Organization's (WTO) international trade rules.

Roche, with US$22 billion in sales across the world in the first half of 2012, joins the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis and German drug maker Bayer as having been bruised in the Indian legal system.

 India’s Patent Office fired the first shot in March by issuing a license to a generic drug manufacturer, effectively ending the German pharmaceutical company Bayer’s monopoly in India on the drug sorafenib tosylate, known as Nexavar, which is used to treat kidney and liver cancer. Full story...

Related posts:
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  2. Have India’s poor become human guinea pigs?
  3. Bhopal disaster victims used as lab rats for Big Pharma! WTF!
  4. U.S. pharmaceutical companies testing drugs on India's poor...
  5. India has become a huge testing ground for Big Pharma's trial medicines...
  6. Impoverished women in India used as guinea pigs by pharma company...

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