“It’s a very important judgment. If Section 3(d) is valid, the only remedy left is not to challenge the provision of law, but file an appeal under the Indian Patents Act. It reiterates the people’s authority to decide for themselves what is law. The law is a sovereign instrument, TRIPS is merely a contractual agreement of international parties on trade interests. This precedent is the first of its kind. It will have implications the world over for access to medicines.”
Ellen t’Hoen, policy director of MSF Access to Medicines Campaign, rubbished the notion that refusal of patents for incremental innovation will lead to denial of access to new and better medicines for patients and said:
“The reality today is that despite the fact that patent protection has increased, innovation has declined dramatically in terms of new products. If you assess them form a therapeutic point of view, they are less and less meaningful. You cannot say more patents lead to more therapeutic benefits for patients. If it does lead to more therapeutic benefits, patents lead to a situation where only a minority of the population can benefit because only a few people can afford them — what kind of innovation is that?”
Meanwhile, it appears that the Swiss Government is unlikely to lodge a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism against India’s intellectual property right (IPR) regime. The Swiss Federal Councillor in the Department of Economic Fffairs, Doris Leuthard, currently on a visit to India, said the issue was between a private company and the Indian judicial system, and the Swiss government did not have anything to do with it.
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