STRATEGIES IN THE CURRENT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY REGIME

Abstract

Dear Reader, India and Indian Pharma became truly Intellectual Property (IP) conversant and compliant, post-WTO, TRIPs and the Indian amendments to Acts on Patents, Trade Marks and other forms of IP. Soon after the Patents Act, 1970 underwent three amendments to make India product patent compliant, there have been a plethora of patent litigations which peaked during 2006 to 2016. This has mainly been due to the product patents on transitionally semi-protected block buster drugs, which had no patents in India on the earliest broadly claimed patent, since India was not honouring product patent applications prior to 1995. In an attempt to seek protection, post-1995, tweaked forms, salts or derivatives were attempted to be protected which led to oppositions, revocations, counter claims and allied out of court settlements. The patent litigations in India have peaked out, of late. However, since many active pharma molecules are going out of patent in recent times and many more patent expiries are on the anvil, there are few remnant litigations and challenges, while the innovator attempts to enforce the follow-on patents or what is generally known as “evergreening” patents.