Ipa Feels Case For Compulsory Licensing Will Be Strengthened

As various stakeholders in the pharmaceutical industry make their case before the select committee of Parliament looking into the Patents (Amendments) Bill of 1999, the Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA) has gathered evidence that it believes will strengthen its case for compulsory licensing of drugs that are patented.

This comes in the form of a piece of legislation that has been introduced in the United States House of Representatives called the Affordable Prescription Drugs Act which seeks to reduce "high prescription drug prices through market competition."

Introduced by Democrat Congressman Sherrod Brown in September last year, the legislation suggests implementing product licensing of patents on essential medicines whose high prices are a detriment to public health.

 

The act seeks to lower drug prices through competition and not price controls and "to help

a child from a low income family

or a senior on a fixed income afford medicine prescribed by a doctor."

As per this legislation (yet to be approved in the US Congress) compulsory licensing should be possible if the patent holder, contractor, licensee or assignee has not taken or is not expected to take within a reasonable time, effective steps to achieve practical application of the subject invention in a field of use, if the compulsory licensing is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs which are not adequately satisfied by the patent holder, contractor etc, or if the patented material is priced higher than may be reasonably expected based on criteria developed by the secretary of commerce.

The compulsory licensing would involve the paying of adequate royalty to the patent holder for losing exclusivity.

The IPA reasoning is that if sections of a free market such as the United States of America have found the need to introduce compulsory licensing, there must be a legitimate need for this.

"We want the conditions (for compulsory licensing) that form part of this legislation to be introduced even in the Patents Act. Though the amended act does have a provision for compulsory licensing, it is left to the discretionary powers of the Patents Controller.

"We want specific conditions to be cited plus a royalty amount to be paid to the patent holder to be fixed," said D G Shah, secretary general, IPA.