Why Novartis case will help innovation
- SUDHIR KRISHNASWAMY
The Supreme Court judgment on Glivec is a blow for a patent regime with a higher threshold of inventiveness
On April 1, 2013, the Supreme Court upheld the Intellectual Property Appellate Board's decision to deny patent protection to Novartis's application covering a beta crystalline form of imatinib —the medicine Novartis brands as Glivec, and which is very effective against the form of cancer known as chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML). The judgment marked a crucial conclusion to a saga that has been several decades in the making. The story could start in 1972, if you like, when the Indian Patents Act of 1970 — grounded in the findings of the Bakshi Tek Chand and Ayyangar Committee Reports — came into force, enabling the explosive growth of the Indian generics industry into the world's largest exporter of bulk medicines. Or, it could start in 2005, when India amended its patent law to comply with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), a trade rule at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that established a new global regime of intellectual property.
Key lesson
No matter where we start, the saga has come to a close, and the key lesson seeping through is that good sense won. Firstly, the Supreme Court decision was not about the patentability of the imatinib compound as such: that patent, having been instituted in 1993, is excluded from the purview of the Indian patent system, which is only obligated to consider patents filed in 1995 or after. The case the Supreme Court heard was whether Novartis' beta crystalline form of imatinib was worthy of patent protection: its judgment was that this modification by Novartis did not satisfy the standard of inventiveness required under Indian patent law. Secondly, Indian patent law is as yet unchallenged at the WTO; Novartis's earlier challenge to the constitutionality and TRIPs compatibility of Indian patent law was rebuffed by the Madras High Court in 2007 and no appeal was pursued. Thirdly, the Supreme Court judgment effectively recast Indian patent law as being nuanced and original in its meshing of domestic political economy concerns with the integrated global economy it participates in.
The outcome of this nuance and originality? Imatinib will continue to be available to patients in India from multiple suppliers at a price 10 times less than the current cost of Glivec; approximately 27,000 cancer patients in the country who pay for their imatinib will continue to have access to the medicine in the public and private sectors at the lowest cost possible; and should Novartis ever suspend its charitable programme, all 15,000 of the cancer patients who currently receive imatinib free from Novartis will have similarly equitable access to the medicine.
Hackneyed narrative
Despite substantial progress in the popular understanding of the place of patents in a developing country like India, a hackneyed narrative has emerged, especially in the pink press, warning us that this judgment will have a negative impact on innovation in the long run. As it happens, one of the most useful outcomes of the Supreme Court judgment is a renewed focus on what innovation is — and how it should be rewarded. Behind the headlines foretelling various levels of doom — the death of innovation in the country and the end of research for diseases which matter to us — is the popular idea that patents are a proxy for innovation. After all, patents are widely understood as short-term monopolies enshrined in the law and provided as incentive to inventors on the evaluation of publicly disclosed innovation. It would seem as if patents are synonymous with innovation. Except, this is not quite the case.
Minor variations
In the last three decades, the global gold rush for patents has been dominated by filings for minor and mostly inconsequential innovations — at the expense of breakthrough innovation. In large part, this is because weak standards in the patent laws of developed countries (led by the U.S. and Europe) have explicitly encouraged this shift. The whittled-down, lobbied-out, stretched-beyond-recognition patent regime that is characteristic of these countries — and other less-developed countries where they influence the polity — is unfortunately the 'norm' to which India now finds itself an 'outlier.' But the outlier is a solution: the norm is the problem. A British Medical Journal report from 2012 succinctly summarises the global research situation for new medicines: "This is the real innovation crisis: pharmaceutical research and development turns out mostly minor variations on existing drugs, and most new drugs are not superior on clinical measures."
If the patent regimes of developed countries are dominated by minor patents, many or most of which have no demonstrable innovation to show, why are they so avidly pursued by global pharmaceutical companies? A Public Library of Science study from 2012 points to the answer: secondary patents extend the patent life (and thereby, the monopoly pricing) of pharmaceutical products long beyond their designated life span, adding, on average, between six and seven years to the patent life of the original compound. Any patent regime which incentivises secondary patents with weak laws will only serve to extend commercial monopolies at low levels of innovation — and will no longer provide the incentive for genuine innovation. The genius of the Supreme Court judgment on Novartis's patent application lies in restoring the connection between patents and innovation by upholding and legitimising a regime with a higher threshold of inventiveness.
Will Indian patent law change the way the global pharmaceutical industry innovates? No; not immediately, at least. Could it positively affect pharmaceutical innovation in the long run? Absolutely. In the present day, India comprises 1.3 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market by value. That figure, in itself, is why changes to Indian patent law will not help global pharmaceutical giants break free from the incentive model they are prisoners of. At most, they might have to learn how to compete in a crowded market for some of their less original products. The symbolic opportunity presented by the Supreme Court's backing of Indian patent law, however, is a real threat — and pharma CEOs in New York, London and Basel get it. In the long run, as more countries understand the Indian model, appreciate its legitimacy, and reflect on its benefits to both public health and innovation, they might want the same. And if that happens, when that happens, we may begin to see real, positive change in the way pharmaceutical innovation works.
Empowered scenario
The Indian Patents Act of 1970 was a game changer. From the perspective of 43 years of experience, we can safely say that it shook up the pharmaceutical industry and altered it irreversibly. The new, empowered scenario was most vividly illustrated during the peak of the HIV/AIDS treatment crisis in the first decade of the 21st century, when countries like Brazil, Thailand, South Africa and, of course, India, took health security into their own hands and legitimately moulded their domestic patent systems to respond to the crises within. The Indian Patents Amendment Act of 2005, which gave us the law we have today — a law which was ratified last week — has the potential to change the game once again. This time, however, the change might come more slowly; the hell the Indian government was dragged through has not been lost on anyone. The lengthy trials, the frequent challenges, the full-scale vilification, and every other scare tactic thrown our way by a public-relations juggernaut (along with the implicit support of many developed country governments) was not for nothing. And the Supreme Court judgment is all the more important as a result, for it shows a new way may be hard and tiresome, but is ultimately possible.
(Achal Prabhala works on access to medicines; Sudhir Krishnaswamy is on the faculty of Azim Premji University, and is the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Visiting Professor of Indian Constitutional Law at Columbia Law School)
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