Legal Forum: Patents Pending

Nagendra Setty

An important new law went quietly into effect at the beginning of this year. It promises to have immense effects on the pharmaceutical industry: It will reshape one of the world's largest markets, make an important population of scientists and researchers more accessible to American companies, alter the infrastructure that supplies the developing world with drugs for AIDS and other diseases, and push a group of ferociously competitive companies away from generics and toward proprietary drugs.

Significantly, it wasn't passed either by the United States or the European Union, but rather, by India, the world's fourth-largest pharmaceutical market and the home of significant resources in pharma manufacturing and R&D.

The new law alters India's approach to patents. Since 1972, patents in India have been governed by the Patents Act of 1970. The law had a couple of key limitations that have affected commerce in India. The relevant one for pharma is that it made it illegal to patent pharmaceutical products—actual formulations as opposed to manufacturing processes.

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