FT: “Pharmaceutical companies fear that the battle raging in India over patents will inspire other countries to change their laws
Meena, a 45-year-old New Delhi widow with a 10-year-old son, was diagnosed with potentially fatal blood cancer in 2010. To control it, her doctors prescribed an Indian*- made generic version of Novartis’ leukaemia drug.
But her body stopped responding to it and Meena was advised to switch to a more expensive drug, Sprycel, a second-line cancer drug made by Bristol-Myers Squibb. Sprycel costs Rs160,000 ($2,900) per month, far out of reach for a woman living on her late husband’s Rs17,000 monthly pension.
A solution appeared to be at hand last May when Natco, an Indian generic drugs company, started selling its own version of Sprycel for Rs9,000 a month. A charity helped Meena to buy it.
But Meena’s ability to obtain potentially lifesaving medicine became tied up in a dispute pitting the interests of the world’s largest drugmakers – who spend $70bn annually developing drugs – and generic manufacturers in the developing world.
BMS, the US drugs group with revenues of $17.6bn in 2012, accused Natco of patent infringement, prompting the India’s Supreme Court to order the Indian drugmaker to stop making the medicine until a final verdict was reached. While some patients stocked up before the generic disappeared, Meena could only afford a few bottles.
The BMS “access programme” for the poor offered to sell her Sprycel for Rs15,000 per month – a big discount on the market price but still more than she can afford. Friends have chipped in to buy her a month’s supply but she is distraught about the future. “I don’t see a ray of hope,” she says. “Even if I use all my resources, I can only afford it for two months. It’s not sustainable.”
It is this struggle of educated, middle-class patients to obtain cutting-edge medicine that has led to a showdown between India and western pharmaceutical companies over the patents and prices of lifesaving drugs.
Western drugmakers fear India will inspire other emerging markets to challenge their patents. They have accused India of trampling on their intellectual property rights after a series of decisions overriding, revoking or refusing patents on cancer and hepatitis C drugs from Bayer, Pfizer, Roche and Novartis. The companies are also irate that New Delhi is considering compulsory licenses for another three patented cancer drugs, including Sprycel, and Roche’s breast cancer drug Hercepterin.
At a recent US Congressional hearing, Roy Waldron, Pfizer’s chief intellectual property officer, complained that New Delhi had “routinely flouted trade rules to bolster the Indian generics industry”.
Indian generics executives and patients activists say the reality is more nuanced. They argue that India’s courts are trying to balance drug companies’ intellectual property rights against the need for affordable medicine for 1.2bn Indians. India’s public healthcare system has virtually collapsed, with Indians paying 60 per cent of their healthcare costs from their own pockets.
This stand-off is taking place within the framework of a new patent law crafted to preserve India’s manoeuvring room to keep medicines affordable at home – and protect its exports of drugs abroad.
“The portrayal is that India doesn’t respect intellectual property rights but the reality is that it is balanced,” says Leena Menghaney, a lawyer with Médecins Sans Frontières, the humanitarian organisation. “The decisions that go in favour of the MNCs [multinational corporations] never get reported and decisions against them always hit the headlines.”
D.G. Shah, secretary-general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, which represents India’s biggest generics firms, rejects suggestions of protectionism for domestic companies.
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