US insulin maker and biotech
researcher Eli Lilly and co, won the most number of those patents in that
period, securing 36 of them, mainly for biological products and compounds to
treat diabetes and related diseases.
The patent office granted 3,488
drug patents, of which more than 3,000 were granted to foreign pharma
companies. The patents, which cover inventions related to single molecules or
groups of compounds or processes leading to development of various medicines,
typically allow these companies exclusive marketing rights for such products
for at least 15-20 years in India.
The IPO data for 2010-13 also
showed that local drug makers and research institutions were granted 230
patents. The names include Cadila Healthcare Ltd, Ranbaxy Laboratories
Ltd, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Wockhardt Ltd and the
state-run Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
India, which follows a stricter
patent regime than the US and European Union, has been at the receiving end of
criticism for turning down several patent applications and revoking existing
patents following judicial challenges filed by local as well as foreign rivals.
The country’s patent law, unlike
that of the US and Europe, doesn’t allow patent grants for drugs invented
before 1995—the cut-off year fixed when India reintroduced its product patent
regime for pharmaceuticals in 2005 as a signatory to the World Trade
Organization’s Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement.
The reasoning was that previous
inventions are already in the public domain and do not deserve a patent grant.
The country also doesn’t allow
invention claims based on simple modification of already known drugs unless the
new version is substantially superior in terms of treatment efficacy.
The Indian patent law also
empowers interested parties to challenge erroneous patent applications and
patent grants.
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