Novartis not to invest in research & development in India

Apr 01, 2013

Tags:

Mumbai: Swiss pharma major Novartis today said it will not invest on research and development in India and move R&D to favourable destinations following the Supreme Court order rejecting its patent plea on cancer drug Glivec.
The company will continue to introduce products in the country, but not invest in R&D here, Novartis India Ltd Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Ranjit Shahani said at a press conference here.
Novartis will move R&D investments to favourable destinations, he added.
Shahani said the company will, however, keep filing patent applications for innovative products and continue to invest in India "but cautiously".
The Supreme Court today rejected Swiss firm Novartis' patent plea for its cancer drug Glivec.
A bench of justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prakash Desai dismissed the claim of the Swiss firm for getting exclusive rights for manufacturing the cancer drug on the ground that a new substance has been used in the medicine.
While a one-month dose of Glivec costs around Rs 1.2 lakh generic drugs, manufactured by Indian companies, for the same period are priced at Rs 8,000.
The Indian Patent Office had rejected the patent application of Novartis for the ß-polymorphic form of imatinib mesylate on various grounds in 2006, including that a patent could not be granted for the ß-polymorphic form under section 3(d) as it did not have any increase in efficacy over the previously known substance.
Novartis appealed against the rejection of the patent by the Patent Office before the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) in 2007, but the appeal was dismissed in 2009.
Aggrieved by this dismissal, Novartis went to the Supreme Court which has now confirmed the rejection of the patent.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/228086" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-8af192ce8fe6e30e1ef90dd1b4fc334e" value="form-8af192ce8fe6e30e1ef90dd1b4fc334e" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="87154593" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>