- According to a leaked excerpt of the FTA draft (November 2022), UK wants India to relax its strict evergreening laws for British pharma companies.
- It says that both India and UK “shall not require a patent applicant to prove enhanced efficacy”
- Effectively, this agreement will lead to the dilution of Section 3(d)
Understanding its impact
- It will hamper the entry of affordable generic drugs in the market
- India is the market leader in supplying generic drugs - 20% of the global supply is done by India (as of November 2022)
- India made generic drugs are lifesavers in many low and middle-income countries.
Conclusively, this will hinder the production of generics - thus leading to unintended consequences across the globe
Related Notes
- Evergreening of patents by pharma companies
- How are pharma companies incentivised to innovate and burn money