Drug patenting in India: looking back and looking forward

It has now been 20 years since the TRIPS Agreement, which established minimum standards for intellectual property (IP) regulation, came into force. Its implementation in India has been controversial, and in particular Section 3(d), a provision designed to restrict the grant of “secondary” patents, has been pinpointed as making it difficult to obtain pharmaceutical patents. Ken Shadlen and Bhaven Sampat suggest that paying so much attention to 3(d) may be misplaced. They argue that another, more fundamental, aspect of TRIPS implementation in India, the timing of the country’s adoption of pharmaceutical patents, is more important than 3(d) for understanding the current patenting landscape. And because the effects of timing are transitional, in the future it may be less difficult to obtain patents in India than is widely thought.