Mint Explainer: Why do Indian drug makers challenge global giants' patents?

legal battles between domestic generic drug manufacturers and global innovators, reigniting the debate over striking a balance between innovation protection and broader drug accessibility.Looking ahead to another year of patent challenges, Mint examines who ultimately benefits from these challenges.New drugs or methods of making them are typically protected by patents under intellectual property (IP) rights. The patent grants the innovator exclusive rights to market the drug for a set period, typically 20 years.

Patented drugs are typically priced high as innovators capitalize on their monopolies, attempting to recover research and development costs and fund future innovations.Since Indian drugmakers primarily produce generics, or copycat versions, they either wait for patents to expire or challenge the innovator’s patent once they understand the underlying innovation. These disputes often stretch years, rarely, if at all, reaching trials.Indian courts take a strict but balanced approach to pharmaceutical patents.

They closely scrutinize drug patents to prevent evergreening, while protecting genuine innovation. This approach was firmly set out in the 2013 Novartis-Glivec ruling, where Novartis AG sought a patent for its cancer drug Glivec (imatinib mesylate), claiming it was a new form of the cancer drug imatinib.

The application was rejected for failing to show proven therapeutic improvement, a decision later upheld by the Supreme Court.If a company has managed to reverse engineer a new drug before the patent expires, challenging the patent to gain market access gives it a significant edge over other generic competitors. Not only that, but launching the product at a lower cost also allows the firm to undercut the