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Free for all? Patent lawscan make or breakgeneric drug production.

India is the

pharmacy for the

developing

world.

Ellen 't Hoen

MSF's Campaign for

Access to Essential

Medicines

Published online 15 January 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news070115-1

News

Petition aims to maintain cheap drugs

Court case in India threatens to derail generic medicines.

Apoorva Mandavilli

The international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders

(Mdecins Sans Frontires, or MSF) is ramping up their fight against

the Swiss drug giant Novartis, urging the company to drop a lawsuit

that could make it much more difficult for Indian companies to

produce cheap, generic drugs.

With the case expected to come up for hearing on 29 January, MSF is

pumping up efforts to collect signatures on a petition against the suit.

Already they have tens of thousands of names, but are aiming to get

many more. A win for the pharmaceutical company, they say, would

deprive the world's poorest people of affordable medicines.

Indian companies are known for making low-cost copies of expensive

medicines, particularly AIDS drugs. More than half of the

antiretroviral drugs used in developing countries, and about 80% of

those provided by MSF, are made by Indian companies. "India is the pharmacy for the developing

world," says Ellen 't Hoen, director of policy advocacy for MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential

Medicines. "We largely depend on India."

India's laws currently don't allow drug companies to patent products that

are seen to be simply new derivatives or combinations of existing drugs.

This frees up local companies to do a booming trade in inexpensive copies

of the non-patented formulations.

In January 2006, Novartis was denied a patent by a court in the southern

Indian city of Chennai for their cancer drug Glivec, after the drug was

deemed a variation of a previously patented substance.

But Novartis disagrees with the decision. In May, the company filed

petitions against the Indian government and the Indian Patent Office, claiming that the rulingviolates World Trade Organization rules on patents.

MSF and other activist groups fear that if Novartis wins, an increase in patented drugs in India

will mean fewer generics for all.

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Other companies have remained on the sidelines of this court case, but a victory for Novartis

would benefit all multinational companies, says 't Hoen. "I think they're all watching because none

of them are happy with that part of the law," she says.

So far, at least, Novartis is standing firm. "We don't agree with the petition," says Paul Herrling,

head of corporate research for Novartis. "It's our democratic right to appeal to a court."

The last time MSF took on such a high-profile fightwas in 2001, in response to 39 companies taking the

South African government to court to prevent the

country from importing cheap AsIDS drugs. "This

looks very similar," says 't Hoen.

In that case, MSF collected nearly 300,000 signatures

from more than 130 countries. Following public outcry,

the companies eventually backed down and dropped

their court case.

But there have been other instances when companies

have won, notes James Love, director of the Consumer

Project on Technology in Washington DC. "Sometimes

protest works, sometimes it doesn't," Love says. "But there's only so much heat the companies can

take."

Visit our aimstomaintainchea.html">newsblog to read and post comments about

this story.

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