Indian Economy

[misha]

i hope theres no thread on this topic already.........
my aim of starting the thread.....we can discuss some of the present indian economic issues like, TRIPS and the present patent regime and pros and cons for the indian pharma, End of the textile quota and its effects and history, FIIs, Cmparisions with the Dragon......etc etc..........hope to see some contributions soon..............
got to continue with some search work so will be adding my bit after some time

[QuintEssence]

TRIPS is a good way to start off..now that the Product Patent Regime is now officially on..property rights, specially as in the case of pharma companies. they r gonna take the blows first.

what about the so-called mailbox controversy? does anybody have any idea about that. also, the P.Patent Regime ..is it gonna effect medicine price and availability??

what is in it for the indian companies....n why has the govt. promulgated a law like this..is it gonna be beneficial for us or not..how many countries in the world have similar laws..i assume that most of them have followed TRIPS. what is the scope for legal disputes..who will be the arbiter..what form will the penalties take..

how abt the ayurveda controversy? is it gonna be under our own IPR or do we have to register each and every technique...

i hope that most of these questions get answered by our friends in this field.

[misha]

i have no idea about the mailbox controversy.......but it might have something to do with the pre-patent challenging......the form used by our governemnt..............

but ya the prices might increase.......thats cause the companies(dont remeber the term for those) which used to manufacture the same drugs as the original makers did but by lower cost processes wont be able to continue........and ths is largely effecting AIDS patients

[misha]

seems like no one is interested in indian eco.

[CA4IIMA]

Hi ,,
may be i can throw some light on this :

MailBox controversy:

Simply put it is the number of applications pending with the department. Indutry was expecting it to be around 7000 , but it is feared that the figure might cross 12000.
The drug manufacturers now feel that thr will be much more patents that they expected and it will hamper thr business, if sumthing similar to thr prospective innovation is patented.
Another fear is that due to this huge num of applications, dept will take a huge time in granting patents, and during this time gap there r no Exclusive Marketing Rights (EMR) , so evryone can commercialise the to be patented product till the time patent is granted.


Regarding the prices will increase or not :- This is too big a ques to be answered, even the Govt and the Industry is not sure on this.

Y has govt promulgated a law like this : to comply with the TRIPS agreement, under which product patent regime has to be applied by jan 1,2005 by all member countries.
Prior to this India had a process patent regime.

Hope i answered few of the queries,
plz throw sum more light on the issue.

[kabmilega]

Hi everyone,

Nice thread....TRIPS is basically India's committment to the WTO and the PPR from Jan 1st this year was a fallout of India signing WTO Agreement for the same on 1 jan 1994 where it said that 10 years later it would start the Product Patent Regime.
Previously if an MNC pharma company got a patent after USFDA Approval, an Indian Co. could slightly change the process or formulation and market its own version of the drug in the domestic country. This greatly hampered MNC pharma cos. whilst simultaneously benifitting domicile cos. like Ranbaxy and Dr. Reddy'd Labs.

However, after 1 jan-2005 companies cannot produce generic versions of bulk drugs which have been patented after 1995 and will thus have to invest more on their R&D. the immediate impact of this is not known. The mail box controversy, as has been rightly pointed out, is the number of patent filings that have been made by thousands of Pharma Cos. to cash in on the pre-ppr. many of these small companies will face problems after PPR and could be acquired by bigger players.

[misha]

some of the negative effects of product patents:

* it will creat monopoly of a few of the companies esp MNCs which will lead to unreasonable price hikes. It was India's previous patent law (process patent) which had kept competition alive and had in turn benfited consumers

* poor AIDS patients will be seriously effected cause they were the major consumers of generic anti-retrovial drugs. cipla and hetero, producers of generic AIDS drugs offer a price per patient in the range of $300-600, whereas the same package from MNCs like glaxo are priced somewhere b/w $10000-15000

[anand_mbadreams]

Regarding the patent regime... i think the govt. could have allowed some more time to the pharma cos. to grow into R&D hubs (the way Dr.Reddy's is trying) rather than just patent challengers and duplicaters.

But there can be some benefits too if this oppourtunity is wisely utilised ..like:

1) A complete overhaul of patent filing process and drug testing standards is needed. Also rules for clinical trials need to be relaxed. Lakhs of people can earn a living by just subjecting themselves to clinical drug testing.

2) With TRIPS coming into play lots of pharma MNCs may shift their R&D hubs to India. This again is a huge oppourtunity.

Keep Posting

Anand

[greatSCOTT]

but the govt couldn't help it....the companies knew abt the fact that the regime would come into place...as anand said .....reddy's tried to upgrade r&d....but i agree with misha that price increase may be a fallout

[misha]

we could have compulsory licensing and parallel licensing (its there in Africa)......now m not aware if these 2 are already included or not............but these are allowed in the TRIPS........