Patents will only benefit patients, claim drug cos

As the issue of patent protection assumes centrestage not only in India but also in the country’s free trade agreements with different countries, multinationals are dredging up a number of reasons to support their demand for patent protection. Though patient rights groups feel otherwise, drugmakers are insisting it is patients who will be the ultimate beneficiaries if their drugs manage to get patent protection.

Gregory Kalbaugh, the director and counsel of the US India Business Council (USIBC), a group that authored a study on the value of incremental pharma innovations, said over the telephone from Washington, “Incremental innovations are not trivial. Therefore, patenting them would only expand treatment options and benefit millions of patients in India.”

USIBC counts as its members leading drugmakers like Pfizer and Novartis.

Incremental innovation refers to innovations based on existing knowledge and existing products. Patents for these innovations are not allowed under section 3 (d) of the Indian Patent Act, unless the new drug shows enhanced efficacy over existing drugs.

Kalbaugh said patents work as an incentive for innovation of new drugs. If they’re not provided for incremental innovations, no innovative drugs would come to the market, depriving patients of wider treatment options, he said. “No investor would put in money if no patents are guaranteed,” he added.

But do patients feel the same about patents, which grant monopoly to a drugmaker? “No,” say the Patnaik (name changed on request) couple from the Sambalpur district of Orissa.

The couple may know nothing about incremental innovation, section 3 (d), or frivolous patenting, but they do know life-saving drugs are exorbitantly priced.

The wife has been suffering from chronic myeloid leukaemia for the last three years. For the couple, spending even Rs 11,400 per month for the generic version of imatinib mesylate is next to impossible. It is only because of a patient assistance programme by the Indian Cooperative Oncology Network (ICON), an NGO with 300 oncologists, that the Patnaiks have been getting free monthly supplies of the drug for the last three years.

Imatinib mesylate, the beta crystalline version of which is called Glivec, is the same drug that Novartis is lobbying hard to get a patent for. Glivec costs Rs 1.2 lakh for a monthly course, 10 times the cost of the generic version.

“I work in a factory in Sambalpur and get Rs 5,000 per month. If not for this programme, we can’t even dream of affording imatinib,” says the husband. If it wasn’t for the Intellectual Property Appellate Board’s (IPAB) rejection of a patent for Glivec last month, the Patnaiks of India and even the world would be denied the life-saving drug.

Y K Sapru, founder chairman and CEO, Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA), the NGO that locked horns with Novartis over the Glivec patent, said lakhs of people cannot afford to pay even for generics. “So how can people pay for drugs with minor variations which get patents and then cost huge amounts? The logic that patents lead to more innovation and therefore benefit patients is absurd.”

Amit Sengupta, secretary of All-India People’s Science Network, concurred. “As patents never bring prices down, they cannot be said to benefit Indian patients,” he said.