The India Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) has decided to challenge up to 90 putative patents, many held by MNCs, in India. This dispute (described previously in this blog) has to do with the Indian Patent Office granting patents that the IPA feel do NOT meet the law's definition of novel - basically claiming that any patents granted are the result of "incremental innovations" without proven clinical advantage.
The total number of patents to be challenged account for nearly 10% of all drug patents filed in India between October 2009 and February 2010. That's a serious challenge.
Big MNCs with patents on the hit list include Pfizer (6), AstraZeneca (4), Boehringer Ingelheim (4), Ratiopharm (3) - (if Pfizer had beat out Teva for Rationpharm they coulda' had 9 on the list). Teva actually does have 7 on the list as is - so maybe it's 10 when Ratiopharm deal goes through.
The IPA is pursuing so-called pre-grant opposition to prevent the patent applications from issuing. See full article.
Posted by Bruce Lehr May 4th 2010.
Pharmalot blog reports that Roche loses a patent on an AIDs drug, Valcyte, as a result of a challenge that the patent was improperly granted as it lacked any data supporting its enhanced effcacy over existing drugs - 1 down and 89 to go.
http://bit.ly/dAQMyo
Posted by: Bruce Lehr | 05/06/2010 at 08:31 PM