EQUITY DIMENTIONS OF PHARMACEUTICAL PATENT PROTECTION IN INDIA

‘Human health or Intellectual Property Rights protection?’ is one of the highly debated issues of the world in the last few decades. While health is a fundamental human right indispensable for the exercise of other human rights, protection of intellectual property rights is considered as the essential booster for the innovators to invent. Starting from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, number of International Covenants, Treaties relating to human rights recognize right to health is a basic human right. However, study reports indicate that despite progress made in the last few decades, millions of the people in the developing countries, including India do not have access to medicines. With the advent of Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the Patent regime of many countries, including India has changed from process patenting to product patenting and resulted in denial of access to essential medicines to the poor segments of the society. it is argued that the changes incorporated to the patent system of India directly impacted the right to health of the people of India. In this background, this paper attempts to analyze the provisions of Patent law on pharma Patent in India to examine whether right to health and patent rights, specifically, the pharmaceutical patentees rights are adequately balanced in India. Keywords: Intellectual Property Right, Pharma Patent, Right to health, TRIPS Agreement