[Random-bits] Word (World) to Novartis: drop lawsuit over Indian patent law

[James Love]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/word-world-to- 
novartis_b_39883.html

January 29, 2007
Word (World) to Novartis: drop lawsuit over Indian patent law
James Love

Novartis is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.  
It is suing the government of India to overturn key parts of the new  
(2005) Indian patent law, which are designed to protect the poor. MSF  
(known as Doctors without Borders in the USA), is collecting  
signatures asking the company to drop it's law suit. You should sign.

[Picture: Daniel Vallesa, Novartis CEO, Tough Guy]

In recent years, Novartis has emerged as one of the biggest bullies  
in the developing world. When Brazil just talked about issuing a  
compulsory license on an AIDS drug, Novartis CEO Daniel Vallesa  
traveled to Brazil to meet with President Lula to complain, and then  
he gave an interview to a local news magazine threatening to pull all  
Novartis products off the market in Brazil, if the license was  
issued. It wasn't. Novartis doesn't even sell AIDS drugs.

When Channel 4 in the UK aired the investigative film "Dying for  
Drugs, Novartis filed a complaint to intimidate others from showing  
the film. Novartis objected to the film noting the company's  
investment in a Leukemia drug (Gleevec/Glivec) was relative  
inexpensive to develop, given the significant donor and government  
contributions to early research, and the small size of the relatively  
short clinical trials. Novartis charges about $130 per day for this  
drug in developing countries.

Indian generic manufacturers were able to produce copies of Gleevec  
for a small fraction of the Novartis price, for sale in developing  
countries where there was no patent, or where a government issued a  
compulsory license. Novartis then obtained a legal prohibition  
against this, under a complicated WTO provision. When questioned  
about this at a 2004 World Bank meeting that I attended, Novartis  
officials told the audience that Novartis wanted to protect it's  
intellectual property in India, and that with strong patent  
protection they considered India a potential market of 50 million  
customers -- telling everyone that they wanted to market their  
products prices that 95 percent of the population could not afford.  
(For more on Gleevec disputes, go here http://www.cptech.org/ip/ 
health/gleevec/).

When Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella took over as chairman of the global  
trade lobby group the International Federation of Pharmaceutical  
Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA), he called for a doubling of their  
lobbying staff.

Now Novartis is suing the government of India, asking to eliminate  
automatic compulsory licenses on older medicines now covered by the  
new India patent act, and seeking to broaden considerably the grounds  
for granting patents, including for new uses for older drugs. This in  
a country where the average per capita income was less than $2 per  
day in 2005.

I signed the petition. You should too.

http://www.msf.org/petition_india/international.html



---------------------------------
James Love, CPTech / www.cptech.org / mailto:james.love@cptech.org /  
tel. +1.202.332.2670 / mobile +1.202.361.3040

"If everyone thinks the same: No one thinks."  Bill Walton"