Pharma group asks USTR to drop India from watch list
The lobby group for India’s pharma industry has asked the US Trade Representative (USTR) office to remove India from its Priority Watch List of places that have weak enforcement of intellectual property laws.
In a submission to the USTR on February 7, the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) said India had made rapid progress on several fronts that were cited by the USTR when it placed the country on the list in 2018.
The USTR’s 2018 report had said that “India has yet to take steps to address long standing patent issues”. One named issue was the “long timelines for receiving patents”.
The IPA said in its submission that since then, India’s Patent Office had “transformed” by increasing manpower and streamlining its procedures.
It said that as a result, patent examination time has significantly decreased and the number of patents pending examination had fallen from 204,177 in March 2017 to 127, 881 in December 2018.
The IPA also commented on trademark applications in the country. It said India’s Patent Office now reviews trademark applications in approximately one month, and registrations are typical completed in less than a year.
Dilip Shah, secretary general of IPA, told news website Moneycontrol that “processing delays are no longer a concern” and he hopes the USTR will take note of this.
"India now has one of the lowest examination times for trademark registration in the world and the indications are that patent examination backlog will be eliminated in about two years,” Shah said.
One provision in Indian IP law which was highlighted as negative by the USTR is the country’s “compulsory licence” law.
The compulsory licensing law means the Indian government retains the right to allow manufacturers to develop and market an affordable, generic version of a drug even though it may be patented.
Shah defended the law and said the “extraordinarily high prices of new drugs is a cause of considerable concern globally”.
“Even developed countries in Europe such as the Netherlands and Switzerland are exploring the possibility of compulsory licensing as a means to control prices of new drugs," Shah said.
Shah added that removal from the USTR’s watch list would be “encouraging recognition of the strides that India has made in promoting, protecting and enforcing IP rights”.
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