Indian pharma group to oppose claims of some 90 drug patents

The Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), whose members include major domestic drugmakers such as Sun Pharma and Dr Reddy's Laboratories, plans to challenge the applications of up to 90 drug patents held by multinational and local pharmaceutical companies at the country's patent offices, according to a report by the. Economic Times of India. The number of patent claims that will face opposition comprise about a tenth of the total applications filed across the country's four patent offices between October 2009 and February 2010.

'This is going to be a continuous process and we will challenge other patent claims as well from now,' DG Shah, IPA's secretary general told the newspaper.

Global companies, whose patent claims are being opposed, include six filed by Pfizer, four each for AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim, three from Ratiopharm, two each for Actavis, Novartis, Solvay adn GlaxoSmithKline and seven from Israel's Teva. The remaining were filed by a host of other global and local generic drugmakers.