India yet to avail of TRIPS flexibilities

Non-government organisation Oxfam today said the provisions of the Patent Ordinance upon which the Patent Amendment Bill would be based had not fully used flexibilities available under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and would therefore, limit the supply of affordable medicines.

"If India now extends the scope of pharmaceutical product patenting beyond the minimum required by TRIPS, and restricts its capacity to override a patent, it will limit its ability to produce affordable versions of new life-saving treatments both for Indian citizens and the developing world," the organisation said.

Oxfam said there were several ways in which the Ordinance could be improved. The law could allow challenges to patent applications in order to prevent patents being wrongly granted, it said.

Secondly, it could ensure that patents are only granted for genuinely new medicines and not for new formulations or second uses of existing medicines, it said.

In addition to this, the law could also streamline and simplify procedures for overriding a patent, as this would give government greater bargaining power when negotiating with pharmaceutical companies over prices.

Oxfam said that the rules for exporting generic versions of patented drugs could also be made much simpler (e.g by using the provision for exceptions in TRIPS Article 30). This is essential if countries without manufacturing capacity, such as many of those in Africa, are to access affordable treatment, it added.