LSE’s Kenneth Shadlen asks whether a recent Indian Supreme Court decision on pharmaceutical patents will make the country’s patent laws more effective, and how the decision may affect global access to affordable medicines.

With the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling on April 1, the long-running conflict between the Indian Patent Office (IPO) and Novartis over an application for a patent on Glivec has, at last, concluded (see here for background). In rejecting Novartis’s application, the SC upheld and strengthened Section 3d of the Indian patent law, a clause designed to minimise the granting of “secondary” patents, i.e. patents on alternative forms or derivatives of existing drugs.

Reposted from the India at LSE blog. Read the full post here.