Incremental Inventions In Pharmaceutical Industry & Section 3(d) – A Future Perspective

Introduction

It takes at least ten years for a new medicine to complete its journey from initial discovery to marketplace in treating patients. The screening process for a potential drug candidate starts with 10,000 drug candidates and ends up with only one approved drug. The cost involved in taking a prescribed medicine to a market place is estimated to cost the drug makers $2.871 billion according to a recent study by Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development and published in the Journal of Health Economics. This being the process of drug development, India's position characterized as a strong generic nation and a low R&D investment towards drug development till pre-2005 took certain gestational time in becoming an innovator country from just an imitator country. India's Patents Act 1970 Amendment in 2005 to become TRIPS compliant in granting pharmaceutical product patents paved the way for a formidable increase in filing of pharmaceutical patent