From: sunder@grusin.crhc.uiuc.edu (Srinivas Sunder)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: AIDS drug by indian firm
Date: 2 Jan 1993 21:09:12 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: grusin.crhc.uiuc.edu

In article <1993Jan2.194625.5575@udel.edu>, chitoor@dori.cis.udel.edu (Srikrishnan R. Chitoor) writes:
|> >
|> >>An Indian drug company recently announced it could produce the 
|> >>AIDS-treatment drug AZT and market it at one-quarter the cost 
|> >>charged to patients in the U.S. But Burroughs-Wellcome, which 
|> >>produces and sells AZT in the U.S., has moved to prevent 
|> >>pharmacies around the world from purchasing the Indian drug.
|> >>Burroughs-Wellcome has threatened the Indian company with a 
|> >>patent-violation lawsuit. But Indian patent laws are different 
|> >>from those in the U.S. Drugs cannot be patented in India; only 
|> >>the chemical processes used to manufacture drugs can be patented.
|> >>The drug is already being produced and many Third World countries
|> >>have expressed interest in purchasing it. Some are considering 
|> >>setting up local manufacturing plants with the Indian company's 
|> >>assistance.
|> >
|> >So Indian patent laws are different, and this AZT can be produced and
|> >marketed in India under gov't protection.  But what happens when it is
|> >exported to countries that are covered by patent laws similar to those in the
|> >US, Europe and Japan?  Does it then become an infringement on B-W's patent?
|> 
|> Are we assuming that US patent laws are RIGHT ? Does not that kind of
|> patent law encourage Monopoly and inefficiency (even if someone else
|> finds a more efficient way to produce AZT, isn't it true that it cannot
|> me made use of commercially ?).

Actually, most patent laws are designed to expire in about 5-10 years. I
believe that one of the intellectual-property quarrels between India and
the US is about the fact that Indian laws allow only for a 5-year patent 
protection period, while the US has a longer one. I think that in the US,
you can use a more efficient process (so long as you have either
invented the process or have bought rights to it) to manufacture something
only if the original product-patent has been bought or has expired. In 
India, there is apparently only a patent on the process, but not one on
the product itself. So, they think that they are eligible to use the
(more efficient?) process even though the product patent has itself not
expired (actually, does not exist).

[...]

|> 
|> >
|> >>But the U.S. government and its imperialist allies in Europe and 
|> >				 ^^^^^^^^^^^
|> >Hell, why don't we just bomb the dammed factory, assassinate the scientists
|> >and get it over with.
|> >
|> Agreed. AZT may not save lives, but it does have a lot of market and there
|> is nothing wrong in India trying to claim a market share for the drug.
|> You are just trying to divert the attention from the US patent laws
|> by claiming that AZT is next to useless. US is indeed a greedy landowner

Fine. Since you brought up the question of whether or not US laws are 
too monopolistic and anti-free-market, let me address that. The central
idea that drives drug companies to do research and market their products 
are the profits generated by marketing the products of their research. To 
do research and develop a product takes millions (sometime billions) of 
dollars, and the idea of providing a patent on the product before allowing 
other producers with to manufacture it using the same basic research-results
but a more efficient process from manufacturing it is to provide time for the
original company to recover its investment. 

The Indian Government, in its wisdom (or lack thereof) has decided that product 
patents don't mean a damn thing and that only process patents matter. Is there 
something wrong with such an approach? You bet your bottom dollar there is.

Right now, when there are hardly any companies in India doing any serious
research to develop drugs (whether a cause or an effect of the lack of 
protection is a chicken-egg problem), the idea of no product patents on drugs is
eminently sensible -- but only if you are afflicted with myopia. If there is
no incentive for Indian companies to do R&D to develop drugs (which incentive
is robbed by the lack of protection for the product), we will be permanently
reliant on foreign companies, and on our ability to plagiarize things that
some foreign company like B_W or B_M_S (Bristol Myers Squibb) have spent
loads of cash on, for our drugs. We will also wind up earmarked as a bad nation
to do business or any kind of R&D in (leaving our scientists to rot away in
Government owned labs), and that can't help but be bad for us in the long run.

|> >So let's cut the bleeding-heart nonsense of comforting the afflicted, that's
|> >Mother Theresa's job.  Does a US company have the right to protect its 
|> >product from a foreign manufacturer's replication, or does India have the
|> >right to export (domestic use is almost irrelevant) a replicated product
|> >and seize the profits thereof?
|> 
|> I think, the Indian patent law which goevrns just the process and not the
|> product is much more progressive than the US patent laws and thus
|> India should be allowed to export the replicated drug IF the process
|> is found to be different.

The law is not progressive, just short-sighted. Even if the process is found
to be different, it is a bad idea in the long run, to be allowed to market
it while B-W has yet to recover its investment, and can only result in a
worsening of trade-relations between India and the US. The dispute here is
more fundamental than the endless quibbling over whether the patent law-periods
are too short in India or too long in the US. The dispute is over the entire
concept of there being two separate patents for a product and the process
requires to make it. India apparently does not believe in product-patents, only
process-patents.

|>    Under the US patent law I might even be able to patent a cow and
|> anyone anywhere in the world who owns a cow should pay me for using
|> his cow :-).

Actually, you can't. The product-patent on a cow expired looooong back. On
the other hand, if you have the ability to genetically engineer a new variety
of cow (with more healthy meat or milk or ivory horns or whatever), you CAN
have a patent on that (no joke) and obtain a royalty of some kind everytime
your authorized agent sells one. Harvard did manage to patent some variety
of genetically engineered mouse to facilitate cancer research.


|>    After all, the US which likes to boast that it `loves' competetion
|> should not have any problems coming up with a better manufacturing
|> process isn't it ?

Fallacious reasoning. If a company is to spend tons of bucks developing a 
product (which takes a helluva lot of resources -- much more than it does
to develop a new process to manufacture it post-invention) only to see their
profits grabbed away because some interloper managed to make the fruits of 
their research cheaper, but did not spend a pie on the original work needed
to develop the product, then you take away the incentive for them to
do the R&D in the first place (after all, there will be no D if the R does not
take place first).

Competition in drug manufacturing IS allowed in the US, but only after the 
product patents have expired, which seems eminently fair to me (the concept
i.e., we can quibble endlessly about the periods of the patents etc.)

I hope that some Commerce ministry bigwig sees the logic in this and has the 
sense to try and work out some arrangement like allowing the (new and improved, 
but plagiarized) AZT to be marketed only in India, thus shutting off a market 
for B-W, but without straining relations excessively by also butting into other 
foreign markets. We NEED these foreign dudes and companies.

|> -Krishna.
|> Opinions are mine.

-- 
Srinivas Sunder                                         sunder@crhc.uiuc.edu

If my employer shares these views, I'd be most surprised.
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