Over the past year, multinational and domestic pharmaceutical and agro-chemical companies have been engaged in a debate over the merits of introducing a data exclusivity clause in the Patents Act.
Date exclusivity is an intellectual property right that refers to the period during which test and clinical trial data of one company may not be referred to by another company to obtain a marketing authorisation.
Most countries like the US, EU and Japan offer data exclusivity rights for five years. Multinationals argue that without this, India, with its huge scientific manpower resources and large patient base, is losing out to other countries.
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Jacques J Gorlin, president of the Gorlin Group, and an expert on the nexus between intellectual property and trade policy, was in India recently to explain the importance of data exclusivity to the media and industry.
He also met Prodipto Ghosh of the Prime Minister