Besides Novartis, the other companies are Roche, J&J, Glaxo and Astrazeneca.
Francis Gurry is expected to be the new head of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Gurry, who is now a deputy director-general at WIPO from Australia, is understood to have won a nail-biting election on Tuesday to replace the agency's controversial head, Kamil Idris.
This has prompted public health groups to call the concerns of Swiss drug major Novartis that inadequacies in Indian patent law will have negative consequences for patients and public health in India as 'bogus'.
The government of Switzerland will not be taking up the allegation by Novartis that Indian patent law is incompatible with the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement at the dispute settlement board of the WTO.
Drug maker Cipla always fought a lone battle to make drugs affordable in India.
Swiss pharmaceutical major Hoffmann-La Roche's patents rights over Hepatitis C drug Pegasys has been challenged by public interest groups at the Indian Patent Office.
A recent court ruling in the US on allowing the declaratory judgment provision in the US patent law has come as a boost to Indian pharmaceutical companies such as Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy's, Sun Pharma and Lupin.
But, the process patent that existed previously had already allowed for a huge number of cheaper generics. Even so, within two months, Pfizer's Viagra had exceeded its own expectations by capturing 1.8 per cent of the market, worth around Rs 80 crore (Rs 800 million). It set an example and gave hope to other pharma companies to launch their products in India.
The commerce ministry has allowed the technical expert group headed by former Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Chief R A Mashelkar to correct the "technical inacuracies" in the patent law report and re-submit it within three months.
Ranbaxy Laboratories, the biggest member of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance, has come out in the open against the alliance's stand on patent issues.
The domestic pharmaceutical industry and non-government organisations are up in arms against the first ever Indo-US tie-up on intellectual property rights
The government is under strong pressure from its Left party allies to scrap the Technical Expert Group on Patent Laws headed by R A Mashelkar, former chief of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
Steven S Reinemund, Chairman and CEO, Pepsi, said though there were bottlenecks, India had the best managerial talent and was comparable with any other developed country.
India was among the 14 countries, including Pakistan and Russia, which remained on the 'Priority Watch Lis't of the United States for "inadequate and ineffective" enforcement of patent laws.
New patented products with significant therapeutic advantage over the existing ones may see higher pricing.
India on Wednesday maintained that its laws were compliant with the trade related intellectual property rights, dismissing the United States concern over New Delhi's "reluctance" to adopt TRIPS compliant patent law.
Close on the heels of amending the Patent Law to bring in product patent regime, the government is all set to come out with a separate legislation for data protection.
India rejects patent on Pfizer's arthritis drug
The number one way the Modi administration can demonstrate its commitment to the success of the Atal Innovation Mission, Accelerating Growth for New India's Innovations, Make in India, Digital India, and Startup India is to strengthen its IP framework in ways that promote the legal and regulatory certainty necessary for greater R&D investment, high-value jobs, and greater innovative and creative outputs, the report said.
The Doha negotiations has been virtually stalled since July 2008.
The unilateral pressure by US administration on India, at the behest of US Business Associations lobby through US International Trade Commission investigations and request to USTR to enlist India under Priority Foreign Country under Special 301 review, lacks legitimacy under WTO framework, the signatories to the letter said.
Adverse IPR report expected this week;Poor labelling could take fight to WTO
Kerry is scheduled to head to India later this month for the fourth annual US-India Strategic Dialogue.
Delegation visit ahead of patent law report.
The Indian government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is known as the architect of the country's liberalisation and economic reforms, is inching towards a "protectionist" regime, top American experts have told US lawmakers.
Under the current administration, political attitudes toward IP seem to have improved.
The United States 'is leading the world in the use of compulsory licenses, and is hypocritical in voicing indignance when developing countries issue compulsory licenses for essential drugs,' Washington-based Knowledge Ecology International, with its offices in Geneva, has alleged.
If people can lobby me for making changes in policies that goes against the country's interest, I won't keep myself in this position, says the vice chairman of NITI Aayog.
India had been engaged in a contentious battle with the US over the issue, especially in the pharmaceutical sector.
The controversy over Human Resources and Development Minister Smriti Irani's educational qualifications has taken a new turn with her assertion that she also has a degree from the prestigious Yale University in the United States
A Priority Foreign Country is a status reserved for those nations that are the most egregious violators of intellectual property rights and have the most negative impact on US competitiveness abroad.
India's IPR framework and enforcement were comparable to those in developed countries
With Donald Trump the appeal has to be to his business instincts in which his personal interests seem to play a significant role, says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.
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