This blog has been tracking increasing innovative activity in India and China as part of our Biotech Trends series, the idea being that as innovative activity increases, the host countries will take a kinder view of property rights.
The trend toward innovation in India is undeniable — as the WSJ’s Venture Capital Blog noted recently, India even has its own version of Y Combinator, an incubator/early-stage fund. India also has many notable successes in pharma and biotech innovation, including Jubilant and Glenmark.
Yet, as Ronald Cass notes in a WSJ editorial, the groundswell of Indian innovation hasn’t yet worked its way up through the legal system. Citing a Delhi High Court decision that allowed generic copies of Merck’s cancer drug Nexavar, Cass infers that India does not “want drug innovation.”
I disagree. India does want drug innovation. Like everyone else, India wants lucrative knowledge economy jobs. But even with a broad desire for policy change, turning a judicial ship is a slow process in a common law jurisdiction.
My bottom line: It will likely take time, and may take facts more sympathetic than Merck’s, to break with precedent and habit and to develop a more innovation-friendly jurisprudence in India. Make no mistake, though, that’s the direction India is heading. Patience, but not complacence, is the order of the day.
