INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: India Rejects Novartis Drug Patent.

The company challenged a clause in the Indian patent law that restricts multiple patents for a drug and denies such protection for newer versions of a “known substance” in already patented medicines unless they are significantly more efficacious.

Patents for amended versions of drugs can be granted in the United States.

But in a landmark judgment that is likely to set a legal precedent for future patent claims, India’s Supreme Court said the beta crystalline form of the salt called imatinib mesylate in the drug fails the test of “invention and patentability.”

I would like to see more skepticism along those lines in the U.S., too. As I’ve argued before, in this piece with Rob Merges in the Harvard Journal On Legislation, U.S. intellectual property law today extends well beyond the limits of the Constitution’s patent and copyright power.

UPDATE: Much more from Derek Lowe, including this: “Indian drug patent law has gone from being nonexistent a few years ago, to being one of the strictest around. I hope that it’s applied uniformly. Novartis has lost what was not a very strong case, to be honest, but the courts in India will hear stronger at some point.”