British drugmaker AstraZeneca’s petition in which it challenged the initial ruling, where it was refused patent protection in context with the cancer-fighting drug, was dismissed by the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) on 26 November 2012.
Back in the year 2007, the Indian patents office had refused patent protection to the quinazoline molecule of AstraZeneca referring to lack of any invention. The decision is a huge blow for AstraZeneca that is already struggling for turning itself around as its main drugs lost the patent protection.
Almost all the global companies selling drug suffered high-profile reversal in the month of March when India decided to grant the first of its kind compulsory licence to the domestic company Natco Pharma. Natco Pharma was given the licence so that it could sell the cheap replicas of cancer drug of Bayer called Nexavar. Bayer had also appealed this order.
Earlier, IPAB retracted the 6-year old Indian patent which was offered to Roche’s hepatitis C drug Pegasys on the grounds that there were no evidences that supported the betterment of this drug than any other existing treatments.
Multinational drug manufacturers consider the 13 billion US Dollar drugmarket of India as a gigantic opportunity. However, they were suspicious about the lax protection for intellectual property in India, where the generic medicines account for over 90 percent of sales.
The generic companies of India that do not require to invest in the future research are free to produce the drugs at an amount which is much less than the originator firms such as Bayer or Roche.
Natco as well as G. M. Pharma had also opposed earlier application of patent for the derivative of AstraZeneca quinazoline. The company eventually filed the review petition which was dismissed by the patent office of India in 2011.
Challenge to review petition is not under purview of IPAB and the petition has failed on the merit as well.
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