Treating The Poor: Roche drops India drug patent
Roche has decided not to pursue patent for a top-selling breast cancer drug Herceptin.
NEW DELHI:
Swiss giant Roche says it has decided not to pursue an Indian patent for a top-selling breast cancer drug Herceptin, paving the way for local generic drug makers to make a cheaper version. The announcement comes after a health ministry committee earlier this year urged the government to issue a “compulsory licence” that would have obliged Roche to license a generic company to make a more affordable copy. India’s patent laws are tougher than those in many other countries as part of its attempt to make medicines more affordable for its hundreds of millions of poor. This has led to a string of setbacks in India for Western drug makers whose patents are accepted in other nations but not by New Delhi. India, known as the “pharmacy to the world”, has a huge generics industry that turns out cheaper copycat versions of life-saving branded drugs for the South Asian nation and other emerging market and developed countries.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 18th, 2013.
Swiss giant Roche says it has decided not to pursue an Indian patent for a top-selling breast cancer drug Herceptin, paving the way for local generic drug makers to make a cheaper version. The announcement comes after a health ministry committee earlier this year urged the government to issue a “compulsory licence” that would have obliged Roche to license a generic company to make a more affordable copy. India’s patent laws are tougher than those in many other countries as part of its attempt to make medicines more affordable for its hundreds of millions of poor. This has led to a string of setbacks in India for Western drug makers whose patents are accepted in other nations but not by New Delhi. India, known as the “pharmacy to the world”, has a huge generics industry that turns out cheaper copycat versions of life-saving branded drugs for the South Asian nation and other emerging market and developed countries.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 18th, 2013.