Mar 31
Novartis Drug Case: Indian Court Rejects Drug Maker’s Attempt To Patent New Version Of Cancer Medicine
Posted in: Today's ChiliNEW DELHI (AP) — India’s Supreme Court on Monday rejected drug maker Novartis AG’s attempt to patent a new version of a cancer drug in a landmark decision that healthcare activists say ensures poor patients around the world will get continued access to cheap versions of lifesaving medicines.
Novartis had argued that it needed a new patent to protect its investment in the cancer drug Glivec, while activists said the company was trying to use loopholes to make more money out of a drug whose patent had expired.
The decision has global implications since India’s $26 billion generic drug industry supplies much of the cheap medicine used in the developing world.
Now this is a rather surprising turn of events – normally, one would have thought that it is pretty straightforward to pick up a trademark for your products, especially when you are a corporate behemoth like Apple. Hence, it proved to be an eye opener when the United States Patent and Trademark Office officially denied Apple a trademark for the iPad mini tablet.
We did manage to catch a whiff of what is to come for the Android platform where Facebook, the social network that just about everyone has, will offer in due time. Assuming that Facebook’s future Android homescreen will take off like never before, there is every possibility that this could indirectly expose Apple’s weakness when it comes to the iOS’ closed environment, which is a polar opposite of what used to be touted as its strengths, namely a cohesive design as well as ease of use.
Most of the world is aware that Saudi Arabia is not exactly the most liberal of countries, mainly because there is no separation between religion and the state. Having said that, there are some rules in that particular country that would have folks living in far more liberal thinking countries wonder how did folks manage to put up with all of those restrictions for so long. Well, the latest bit of information to roll out from Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission is this – select Internet applications such as Skype as well as WhatsApp have failed to comply with regulatory requirements.
