One of the major influencers in the Indian Patent context has been the TRIPs agreement. TRIPs stand for Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property. India entered into the TRIPs agreement back in 1995 but it has been in effect since the 2005 amendment of the Indian Patent Act 1970. India started off offering protection of process patents. Though the patent filing activity in India is very less, it still allowed companies to file for process related patents, particularly the pharmaceutical sector. Since its enactment, the Indian patent system has now re-instated the product patent regime and now abandoning the process patents.

One of the main sectors to have benefited from this enactment is the pharmaceutical sector. The Indian pharmaceutical sector is the third largest in the world with a you turnover of over $ 20 billion. Most of the revenues have been realized is through the generic drug market. The generic drugs are the reverse engineered and cost effective derivatives made from the original drugs that underwent extensive research and development and which were expensive. The generic drug market was easily captured due to low cost of production these drugs and similar efficacy. The Indian pharma companies have successfully broken many of the product patents through reverse engineering.

Seeing the overall turn out of the events, we find that:

  • The Indian pharma companies have successfully discovered new markets of these drugs in the developing nations and third world countries
  • The TRIPs agreement broadened the scope for obtaining patents by including many of the fields, the inventions from which were earlier considered non-patentable
  • Market share of these companies has improved compared to major multi-nationals present in India

On the flipside, a major disadvantage that could be felt here is the reduced investments from these companies into active R&D. Though, in recent times, the large profit volumes and increased competitiveness have been pushing many companies for investments in the research side but a lot of ground still needs to be covered.

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