Delhi High Courts rejected US based Parma major BMS (Bristol-Myers Squibb) appeal to ban India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories’ from launching generic version of Hepatitis –B drug named ‘Entecavir’.
According to Indian patent law, the patent holders have 20 years of exclusive rights of marketing and impede competitors to launch low cost generic drug markets. ‘Entecavir’ the drug by BMS got rights from Indian patent office, Mumbai in 2008, while applied in 2001, that implies the rights lasts till 2021. But according to Prathiba Singh, Ranbaxy’s lawyer states BMS that the formulation of Ranbaxy and process of preparation of the drug ‘Entecavir’ are different. She even assumes in the Courts that the product ‘Entecavir’ is a pre-1995 molecule and therefore can’t be patented as per as Indian laws arguing against an interim stay on the generic version by Ranbaxy.
Current News on same issue:
Based on the article from Economic Times, dated 23rd Sept 2010
High Court of Delhi rejected the request of BMS to temporarily stop Ranbaxy from selling its generic version of its patented hepatitis B drug Baraclude (Entecavir).
Though even, just not Ranbaxy, but Natco and Cipla too planning a launch of Baraclude’s generic version.The Courts decided for trials to confirm whether Ranbaxy’s generic version is really infringing BMS’s Baraclude or not.
Rajiv Nair and Prathiba Singh, lawyers of Ranbaxy revile that Ranbaxy does not infringe BMS’s Baraclude as it is a new dosage of a known compound.
Ranbaxy’s generic version costs less than half of BMS’s product and court even asked Ranbaxy to maintain an account of sales for this particular product separately if in case the orders goes in further in favor of other party would lead them to compensate BMS.
Hence according to the Court’s judgment, Ranbaxy has not to stop their generic version and it continuous in markets as it is for now.
