Where does India stand in recognising IP protocols?
Your comments on Novartis strategy. Novartis ought to know that the Indian Government is too sophisticated to succumb to this bullying. Gone are the days when a bureaucrat in charge of “fisheries” one day would be negotiating WTO agreements the next. We now have a fine cadre of officers who specialise in IP issues and whose sophisticated voices have become a force to reckon with in international IP law making, particularly WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation). Taking on a Government that is slated to become a leading economic superpower and challenging its pro-public health legislation is poor strategy. Particularly so, when one is pitted against powerful public health activists who have strategically positioned the debate to hinge more on “morality” and less on patent law “technicality”. Novartis’s myopia is compounded by a recent McKinsey report that predicts that the Indian pharmaceutical market will treble to $20 billion in the next 10 years. Quite clearly, by moving awa
