Business
Victory for Generics
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| In a victory hailed by aid organizations of the “rights of patients over patents,” Indian drug companies got a freer reign to manufacture and market generic drugs.
An Indian court rejected a challenge by the Swiss drug company Novartis of India’s patent law, which denies patents to new versions of drugs invented before 1995. Novratis was denied the patent on the ground that it was not sufficiently different from a previous drug. The company argued that the law prohibiting patents for a drug that is an “incremental innovation” violated the international intellectual property rights. Indian drug companies charge a tenth of Novratis’s costs of $2,600 for a month’s supply of the drug. |