After India, giving in to pharma-lobbying and international pressure from the US and the EU, adopted a new patent legislation that allows for patenting of drugs, big pharma decided to test it to see if the same trick could be played there.
The test was carried out first by Novartis, using the case of a relatively minor (in terms of Indian market size) leukemia drug, called Glivec. Was a small improvements on Glivec patentable in India as a new drug? More importantly, shouldn't the Indian courts order local producers of generic drugs to stop producing the generic version of Glivec and export it worldwide, now that its new version was covered by an Indian patent?
The answer, coming from Madras, is NO: the small improvement does not contain enough innovative content to support the claim for a new patent. Because the original version of the drug goes back to before 1995, it is not covered by an Indian patent and the local producers can continue competing with Novartis worldwide by selling their version of the drug at roughly 1/10 of Novartis' price.
To learn why this is good news not just for people suffering of the particular form of leukemia that Glivec is effective against, but also for a lot of other sick people, read the extended discussion in the excellent NYTimes piece.
