MSF update on Novartis versus India, Supreme Court case

Humanitarian health organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says it continues to follow progress of the case currently unfolding in India’s Supreme Court. The question of what deserves a patent, enshrined in Section 3(d) of the country’s patent law, is at the crux of Swiss drug major Novartis’ (NOVN: VX) six year legal battle against the Indian government, which has now reached the Supreme Court (The Pharma Letters passim).

Section 3(d) led to the company being denied a patent for a blood and intestinal cancer drug imatinib mesylate, marketed by Novartis as Glivec. Novartis is contesting the Indian patent office’s and appellate body’s decisions to reject the company’s application for a patent on the salt form of imatinib.

A win for Novartis would set a dangerous precedent, severely weakening India’s legal norms against “evergreening,” a common practice in the pharmaceutical industry, says MSF. A single medicine can have several applications for separate patents, each relating to a different aspect of the same medicine. This would inevitably lead to patents being granted far more widely in the country, blocking the competition among multiple producers which drives down prices, and restricting access to affordable medicines for millions in India and across the developing world, it argues.