Drug makers unite to fight frivolous patents

IPA members to challenge patent applications at pre-grant stage

Thirteen leading domestic drug makers grouped under the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) have decided to collectively challenge all frivolous patent applications reaching Indian patent offices.

“On an average, 25 frivolous patent applications are being filed in Indian patent offices every month. Indian patent offices have granted patents to dozens of products that do not merit patent protection under Indian laws”, says IPA Secretary General DG Shah.

IPA, which has Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy’s and Sun Pharma as its members, will challenge such patent applications in the pre-grant stage itself. Challenging patents after grant is a time-consuming process which is also more expensive.

At least 25 pre-grant patent challenges will be filed by the IPA team across four Indian patent offices in April. More will follow, as IPA has identified hundreds of cases where drug patent applications have been filed on “flimsy grounds”.

A study by IPA claims 86 instances of frivolous patents. These, it says, include patents granted to multinational firms such as Novartis (16 products), Eli Lilly (10), Pfizer (9) and domestic firms Aurobindo (1) and Emcure (1).

“A limited study conducted by us early last year found at least 86 cases of patent grants for pharmaceutical products that were just minor variations of existing products. That is when we decided to set up a dedicated team to fight all such patent applications to prevent them from being granted,” Shah said.

The IPA team of experts, comprising four scientists, has begun scrutinising all pharmaceutical patent applications, irrespective of the business interest of its alliance members.

The first set of pre-grant oppositions will be against the patent applications made by both domestic as well as foreign multinational drug firms in October 2009.

The Indian pharma alliance is a strong grouping. Its members collectively spend about Rs 2,100 crore in research every year, which is 90 per cent of the total private sector spend in drug research. They account for a third of the country’s annual drug exports worth Rs 50,000 crore. A third of the Rs 55,000-crore domestic market business also comes from IPA companies.

INDIAN PHARMA ALLIANCE SAYS:

# 25 frivolous patent applications filed every every month

# Will fight such patent applications at pre-grant stage

# Frivolous patents awarded to companies like Novartis, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Aurobindo

This is the first time any Indian group is taking up patent challenges in such a comprehensive manner. Currently, these patents are challenged either by individual companies or NGOs interested in specific areas like cancer and HIV.

All member-drug firms of IPA have contributed towards a “corpus fund” for the purpose.

The other members of IPA are Cadila Healthcare, Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Glenmark, Intas, Lupin, Micro Labs, Torrent, Unichem, USV and Wockhardt.

Individual companies will, however, continue to fight patent challenges on their own once the patents are granted.