The larger implications of the Novartis-Glivec judgment

Abstract

The Supreme Court judgment on the Novartis-Glivec case is remarkable because it has gone beyond the specifi c technical and legal issues surrounding patents and has put the matter in a much larger political and economic perspective. The deeper implication of the judgment is that it is not only justifi ed to deny patents when incremental innovation is trivial as in the Glivec case. The judgment has linked the entire question of patenting with net benefi ts to society and has highlighted the relevance of specifi c conditions of a country for deciding the appropriate patent regime. What the judgment says and what it implies has tremendous signifi cance for the patent regimes in developing countries beyond the secondary patenting issues.