Round 1 goes to India
India dodges bullet from Big Pharma in US - The Times of India
WASHINGTON: The Obama administration has resisted pressure from the American domestic business lobby, notably Big Pharma, and avoided escalating a simmering trade dispute with New Delhi. It has retained India on the priority watch list in 2014 instead of naming and shaming it as a priority foreign country as demanded by the western drug industry.
"In making this determination, the United States recognizes ... the critical role that meaningful, constructive, and effective engagement between India and the United States should play in resolving concerns," the United States trade representatives annual "Super 301" report released here on Wednesday said, while mollifying US pressure groups by announcing an out-of-cycle review of India in fall this year.
Super 301 refers to a section of the US Trade Act of 1974 that authorizes the American president to take punitive action against foreign governments that violates international trade agreements or discriminates against or restricts US commerce.
American business lobbies have been up in arms over the past several months alleging that New Delhi is guilty on both counts, mainly on account of widely different interpretations between their commercial interests and profiteering from life-saving drugs, and India determination to lower the cost of such medicines through broader interpretation by way of domestic patent law.
At the heart of the dispute are instances such India's decision in 2012 to issue its first ever compulsory licence to domestic drugmaker Natco Pharma on a kidney and liver cancer drug, Nexavar, patented by Germany's Bayer AG. Such licensing is intended to make the drug more affordable to India's poor.
Big Pharma fears that such moves may become more commonplace and embolden other countries such as Brazil and China to follow suit, eroding the immense profitability of large western drug companies, widely seen as rapacious in poor countries. Generic Indian drug manufacturers who make what Big Pharma says are knock-offs of patented drugs under protection from Indian laws are seen as nibbling away at their profits.
Big Pharma mounted great pressure on the Obama administration ahead of the April 30 Super 301 report seeking to designate India as a "priority foreign country," a category in which only Ukraine is in at present. New Delhi also fought back, enlisting its supporters, including the US defence industry which has its own wares to sell to India.
In the end, Washington stayed India in the milder "priority watch list", but not before announcing that "in the coming months, the United States will redouble its efforts to seek opportunities for meaningful, sustained, and effective engagement on IP-related matters with the new government, including at senior levels and through technical exchanges, that will both improve IP protection and enforcement in India."
"To further encourage progress on IPR issues of concern, USTR will publish a federal register notice and initiate an out-of-cycle review (OCR) of India in the fall of 2014, commencing an assessment of the progress in that engagement," the USTR report said.
