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U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog
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August 07, 2007
Court ruling eases access to medicine
In news releases, leading advocates for low-cost AIDS drugs and other medicines for lesser-developed countries, including Knowledge Ecology International and Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), have praised the Republic of India's High Court in Chennai for ruling against a Novartis patent claim, thereby allowing lower-cost Indian generic equivalents to continue to be sold without royalties. From KEI: Novartis is complaining that the decision today will undermine R&D by claiming that it needs strong patent protection in India for R&D. India has more poor people than the combined population of Europe and the United States. We cannot depend on high drug prices in poor countries to stimulate R&D.
According to Setback for Novartis in India Over Drug Patent in today's New York Times, Yusuf Hamied, chairman of the Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla, also described it as a positive ruling. "If Novartis had won, this would have been a tremendous setback for us," he said. "I am willing to pay a royalty on a new invention, but I am against monopolies. This would have increased monopolies, which would have meant higher prices."
From MSF: Developing country governments and international agencies like UNICEF and the Clinton Foundation rely heavily on importing affordable drugs from India, and 84% of the antiretrovirals that MSF prescribes to its patients worldwide come from Indian generic companies. India must be allowed to remain the 'pharmacy of the developing world.'
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at August 7, 2007 06:58 AM
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