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Indra Nooyi-headed Pepsi-Co backs India's much-disputed Intellectual Property Rights |
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NEW DELHI: US pharmaceutical companies may be gunning for India's patent regime, but New Delhi has found a prominent MNC ally in this high-profile dispute. Indra Nooyi-headed Pepsi-Co has backed India's regime of intellectual property rights, it said in comments to the US Trade Representative.
PepsiCo, the $66 billion food and beverage giant, joins other USheadquartered companies such as aircraft maker Boeing and conglomerate Honeywell Inc, which earlier this year expressed satisfaction with India's IPR policy regime before the US Trade Representative's office, which is reviewing the effectiveness of the country's policies in protecting innovation.
"PepsiCo has been successful in working with the Indian government to secure and enforce its IPR. We applaud the substantial steps India has taken over the 25 years that PepsiCo has had significant presence in India to improve the ability to seek and enforce IPR," according to a submission by Thomas P Schlur, chief counsel of IP at PepsiCo, to the USTR on Friday, which was reviewed by ET.US drug firms are lobbying with their government to pressure India to change some of its patent policies, which they say are detrimental to innovation and investment. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a grouping of leading drug innovators, German company Bayer, and Biotechnology Industry Organization, an alliance of biotech firms, continued to attack India for its weak IPR policies in their latest submissions.
But none of them has pushed strongly for a downgrade of India, which would result in sanctions, at this juncture. The USTR, while announcing an 'out of cycle' review early this month, had already made it clear that it will not revisit India's designation in 2014.
PepsiCo says India is one of its largest and fastest-growing markets and the company has committed to invest an additional $5.5 billion in the country by 2020. India-born Nooyi is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pepsi-Co. Calling intellectual property protection and enforcement a cornerstone of its businesses, Schlur said, "PepsiCo has registered a significant number of its trademarks in India and protects many of its inventions through patents in India."
Among its smaller cribs, Pepsi counts delays in trademark processing and burdensome annual data filing requirements on how the company is working its patents in the country. PhRMA's vice president Jay Taylor told the USTR that it has failed 'to secure high-level meetings with Indian foreign officials, despite repeated attempts' sand India should disband a panel it has set up under its health ministry to consider cases of government-initiated compulsory licensing for patented drugs.
Compulsory licensing is when a government allows someone else to produce a patented product or process without the consent of the patent owner.Indian law allows the government to give license to generic drug firms to make cheaper versions of patented drugs in case of national emergencies, extreme urgency or public non-commercial uses.PhRMA also wants India's patent grant system to be linked to its drug approval system and so that the regulator doesn't dole out marketing approvals to drugs under patent.
Taylor, along with Phil Blake, president of Bayer Corp, urged the US to make India promise it would never mull compulsory licensing on the ground that a foreign company failed to make the drug locally and explain it.
It was Bayer's liver cancer drug Nexavar, for which the Indian patent office issued the first compulsory license in 2012. Bayer went on to urge the US government to extract a commitment from India that it will not issue such licences without a dialogue with the patent-owners (under section 84 of the Indian Patents Act) and unless it meets genuine public health emergencies, as envisaged in its global commitments.
Compulsory licensing is one of the flexibilities on patent protection included in the World Trade Organization's agreement on intellectual property — the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement.
The TRIPS Agreement does not specifically list the reasons that might be used to justify compulsory licensing. While section 84 of the Indian Patents Act allows a generic drugmaker to apply for a CL, section 92 empowers the government to initiate the process to seek applications for such a license.
Industry bodies such as US Chamber of Commerce and US India Business Council have voiced similar IP-related concerns, including seeking data protection and demanding that India relax its additional patentability criteria for incremental innovation. The USTR, under its annual "Special 301" Report on the adequacy and effectiveness of trading partners' protection and enforcement of IPR, has been reviewing whether India's IP regime has deteriorated enough to warrant a downgrade in its status to 'Priority Foreign Country.'
Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com
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