Norvatis
28 March 2012
Norvatis Drop the Case
01 March 2012
5 stories published in this month's news update:
Maternal health – Saving women’s lives
Dadaab – Back to square one
Tuberculosis – A constant battle
Sleeping sickness – A mobile team in in central Africa
Novartis – The final act
23 February 2012
USA
14 February 2012
Norvatis: Stop the attack on generic medicines
01 February 2012
What Novartis says: “price doesn’t affect access to medicines”.
In a statement issued in 2010, Novartis writes that “acknowledging innovation by granting a patent is unrelated to the access to medicines issue. Improving access to medicines is a matter of making medicines available.”
This is not the entire truth.
MSF’s field experience in many developing countries shows that when a patent is granted it has a direct bearing on access to affordable essential medicines. Granting a patent on a medicine provides the patent holder with a monopoly on that medicine, which in turn allows the company to charge a high price in the absence of any generic competition. In fact, improving access to...
01 February 2012
1994 – India signs the World Trade Organization (WTO)‘s Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) which means that it must now start granting patents on medicines no later than 2005.
2003 - Novartis launches its imatinib mesylate as a blood cancer medicine (brand name: Gleevec) in the US at $2,600 per patient per month. Generic versions of Gleevec soon become available in India for under $200 per patient per month.
2005 – India changes its patent law to comply with the TRIPS Agreement, and medicines can now be patented. But the law stipulates that only true medical innovations will be granted patents. Section 3(d) of the law specifies that new forms and new uses of...
01 February 2012
In 2006 the drug company Novartis took the Indian government to court over its patent law, in a move that threatened access to affordable medicines produced in India for millions of people across the developing world. The company wanted to get the law changed so that they could more easily extend the patents on their products, and stop generic companies producing the same medicines at a fraction of the price.
MSF’s Drop the Case campaign, launched in response to this move, gathered nearly half a million signatures calling on the company to drop its case. But six years later, the legal battle continues. India’s Supreme Court is now due to give the final judgement on the case this year. MSF has renewed its campaign call for the...
01 February 2012
Hundreds of activists gathered in New Delhi to protest Novartis's attack on India's patent laws in 2007. MSF and others continue to oppose the legal case today.
