A division bench of the Madras High Court today dismissed a challenge to section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act, 1970 filed by Swiss pharmaceutical multinational Novartis AG and its Indian subsidiary, Novartis India . These petitions challenged the validity of a key provision in the Indian law, which seeks to prevent ever greening and which provided one of several grounds on which the Patent Controller rejected Novartis AG’s patent application for the beta-crystalline of Imatinib Mesylate, brand name Glivec (Gleevec).
In March 2005, with retrospective effect from 1 January 2005, the Indian Parliament amended its patent law to protect product patent protection. A significant and important provision was introduced to prevent every greening and granting of frivolous patents, section 3(d). Continue reading