Eli Lilly criticizes India's patent regime

Some selected excerpts from "India's patent policy is discouraging innovations that can be of help", Q&A: Sandeep Gupta, CMD, Eli Lilly India, in: Business Standard, 31.03.2010

What is your perception of India's product patent regime?

By introducing a product patent regime in 2005, India signalled to the world that it was ready to value and protect innovation. However, this has not been fully implemented in the true letter and spirit. For instance, India’s move of not recognising patents on incremental innovations, unless a significant improvement in ‘efficacy’ is demonstrated, is actually discouraging innovations that can be of great help.

A related issue is data protection. How critical is that for innovation-driven companies like Lilly?
World-over, innovator companies spend millions of dollars to generate extensive clinical trial data to prove safety and efficacy of a drug and obtain marketing approvals from regulators. India doesn’t allow protection to such data and proprietary scientific data of innovator companies are used for granting approvals for generic/second applicants. If this is not unfair commercial use, then what is?

Further, in the absence of a patent linkage mechanism, regulatory authorities continue to grant marketing approvals for a certain product, regardless of its patent status.

Lilly’s global plans include doubling its revenues from emerging markets, including India. Do you have a country-specific strategy to achieve this?
India is one among the top seven countries that constitute the emerging markets for Lilly. Strategy wise, Lilly has its road map clearly laid out. Having excellent in-house talent and resources is one of the pillars of our R&D success, but at the same time, we're excited about the opportunities to collaborate with other companies. That's why we are continuing to transform Lilly from a fully integrated pharmaceutical company (FIPCo) to a fully integrated pharmaceutical network (FIPNet) model. Within this more networked structure, we're teaming with other companies to access innovation and capabilities, reduce costs, share risks, and accelerate productivity.

To illustrate, we already have six-seven research tie-ups in place in India. The tie-up with Zydus Cadila was announced just a few months earlier. Suven, Piramal, Jubilant are some of our other research collaborators.

Source: "India's patent policy is discouraging innovations that can be of help", Q&A: Sandeep Gupta, CMD, Eli Lilly India, in: Business Standard, 31.03.2010

India and Global Innovation at Unilever

Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) will look beyond its current bruising battles for market share and focus on doubling the business, the chairman of its parent said on Monday.

[...]

Polman said Unilever was leveraging its global network through the exchange of ideas and expertise. Products developed in India such as Pureit water purifiers have been taken to other markets such as China, Indonesia and Brazil while the new range of Sunsilk shampoos developed abroad have been brought into the Indian market. Paranjpe added that Unilever sent global experts from other markets to help HUL develop capabilities to deal with modern retail chains.

[...]

Source: "HUL sets sights on doubling business", livemint.com, 30.03.2010

Merck sees R&D opportunities in India

29.03.2010

STEFAN Oschmann is president, Emerging Markets, at Merck, the world's second largest pharmaceuticals company [...] Mr Oschmann hopes to push both revenues and R&D [in India], which "is already among the company's top five markets".

[...] What about R&D? Right now, the bulk of the company's basic research takes place in North America, but that's bound to change, says Mr Oschmann.

India has potentially strong capability in drug R&D. Its reverse engineering expertise, gathered in the days of process patents, used to be the bugbear of the world's pharma giants. After joining the World Trade Organisation, India adopted product patents, but the process expertise continues to make Indian pharma companies world beaters in continuous cost reduction. Indian companies keep innovating manufacturing processes, to lower their production costs further. There is every reason for the world's pharma giants to gain access to this expertise, as they prepare to garner larger shares of their revenue from cost-sensitive emerging markets.

But that's not all. On March 10, a chemical breakthrough that would help produce environment-friendly plastics was announced by scientists from IBM and Stanford University, showing the increasing role of information technology in developing new molecules. India has proven capability in information technology that could be tapped for pharma research. This, indeed, is the case, concurs Mr Oschmann.
[...]

Source: Economic Times Mumbai; Date:2010 Mar 29; Section:Editorial; Page Number 18

Establishment of Indo-German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) in India

New Delhi, 25.03.2010
(Press release by Press Information Bureau, Govt. of India)

The Union Cabinet today approved the establishment of Indo-German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) in India with matching contribution as per Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) approval of 2 million Euro (approximately Rs.13 crore at current exchange rates) per year for next five years. The Centre would be registered as a “Society” under the relevant Act.

The Indo-German Science and Technology Centre shall play a proactive role in facilitating participation of industry in joint R&D projects; provide/assist in mobilizing resources to carry out industrial R&D projects. The Centre shall facilitate and promote Indo-German bilateral collaborations in basic and applied science, research and technology through substantive interaction among Government, academia and industry. The Centre shall also encourage public private partnerships (PPP) to foster elements of innovation and application and cultivate a culture of cooperation between science and industry.

The total expenditure for the proposal is approximately Rs.65 crore for next five years w.e.f. 2010. This is the matching contribution equivalent to 2 million Euro per year from German Government side.


BACKGROUND

The Hon’ble Prime Minister of India visited Germany in April, 2006 on the occasion of Hannover Trade Fair, where India was the partner country. Both Heads of the Governments (Prime Minister and German Chancellor) issued a joint statement stating that both sides (India and Germany) would work together to set up Indo-German S&T Centre in India to facilitate research and industry collaboration to develop new technologies and commercialize it for overall economic and societal development of both countries.

(Source: http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=59870)