Recently, The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) distributed a discussion paper speculating how India’s compulsory licensing policy impacts the market-availability of low-price life saving drugs. Upon completion of this paper, DIPP requested comments and suggestions from various stakeholders, including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI).

Global Health Progress highlights these organizations’ responses as part of its ongoing support for the continued development of public-private partnerships, research and development and protection for pharmaceutical intellectual property rights.

Notably, the joint response prepared by PhRMA and EFPIA notes that policies that break pharmaceutical intellectual property rights are often counter-productive in ensuring access to medicines. PhRMA’s Executive Vice President Christopher Singer writes, "compulsory licensing of patented inventions, including innovative, life-saving medicines, is not a sustainable course of action to address these concerns of affordability and availability. Indeed, use of compulsory licensing will result in outcomes which inevitably will impair Indian patients’ access to new medicines."

Singer explains, "Compulsory licenses, by its very nature, undermine incentives to make and introduce new biopharmaceutical products in India… Generic medicines are direct descendants of patented medicines and inhibiting the patented medicines through mechanisms like compulsory licenses will invariably have a negative downstream effect on the ability of local generics to introduce new products."

OPPI’s response paper made similar points, contending that, "even a prima facie analysis of the situation in India would make it apparent that patents are not the primary cause for poor access to medicines in India." Tapan Ray, Director General of OPPI, explains that less than 1% of the Indian Pharmaceutical market is in sales of patented products. Instead of undermining pharmaceutical intellectual property rights, the organization recommends investments in health infrastructure and financing mechanisms. Ray adds that this would have a much more "meaningful impact on improving access to medicines for the vast majority of the Indian population who lack the financial capability to pay for even generic, off-patent, medicines that comprise even more than 99% or so of the Indian pharmaceutical market."

The OPPI report goes on to state that, "Over the past several years, the experience in most middle and low income countries has been that private-public partnerships and affordable publicly-supported health insurance do much more to improve access to medicines. We do not believe that compulsory licensing of patented inventions is a sustainable or viable course of action to address India’s healthcare challenges. Proposals to promote the use of compulsory licenses could inhibit technological development in the pharmaceutical sector in India and thereby undermine efforts to make medicines and other products widely available to patients."