[Ip-health] The Hindu- India lodges complaint against pharma MNCs with WIPO

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India lodges complaint against pharma MNCs with WIPO

NEW DELHI: India on Wednesday strongly complained to the UN intellectual
property rights body, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO),
about how some handful of multinational companies had launched a
deliberate campaign against India's pharmaceutical industry, which has
broken their 'cartel' in the generic drugs.

Off-patent drugs

"We know how the campaign was there. They still continue to misinform,
mislead and confuse when it comes to the Indian generics, which have
brought a major change in the world," Commerce and Industry Minister
Anand Sharma told Francis Gurry, the Director General of Geneva-based
WIPO, here.

Several consignments of off-patent generic drugs of Indian firms have
been seized in the recent past in Europe on way to destinations like
Brazil and some African nations. While these are off-patent drugs, some
of the European nations have confiscated the drugs alleging they
violated their IPRs.

"There was a time when there was suffocating stranglehold of
multinational drug cartels in the anti-retrovial drugs for HIV/AIDS. It
was the Indian pharmaceutical firms which have brought down the annual
HIV/AIDS treatment cost from $11,000 to $400," he said at a conference
jointly organised by the Commerce Ministry, WIPO and the Federation of
Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

For Indian firms, Africa and Latin America are the major markets for
low-cost drugs used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and
malaria. The two continents account for around 15 per cent of India's
total pharmaceutical exports of about Rs. 40,000 crore.

Robust mechanism

Mr. Sharma further said that India had a strong intellectual property
regime and the law covered the entire gamut, including copyrights,
trademarks and geographical indicators. "It's not only that we have IPR
regime but we also have a robust institutional and administrative
mechanism to implement the law," Mr. Sharma said.

He said actions were being taken against those who violated IPRs. Mr.
Sharma said India had finalised an agreement on traditional knowledge
digital library (TKDL) with the U.S. "I hope we would be able to have it
signed soon. India is currently negotiating agreements on it with
several countries," he added.

TKDL provides information on traditional knowledge existing in the
country, in languages and format understandable by patent examiners at
International Patent Offices (IPOs). The information is available in
English, German, French, Japanese and Spanish.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/11/13/stories/2009111357651300.htm