A good example is when Novatris challenged the Chennai high court in India to have exclusive rights to a medicine they invented to sell it at the price they wanted, rather than to have other companies sell the drug at an affordable price and have them lose millions of pounds and be below profit.

In India, the term of patent for medicines is 2 years. So upon Novatris inventing the drug and selling it. Novatris was “patent tweaking”, which is when a company slightly alters their product, then applies for a patent in order to get another term of patent, in turn extending their exclusive rights to sell the drug. When other companies sold the drug at a much lower price, which was a benefit to the poorer Indians. The chance of Novatris ever getting a return on investment was slipping.

Novatris lost the court case, saving millions of lives, and costing millions of pounds. Drug companies will be reluctant to sell drugs in that country again. I personally think that the court was biased towards its own country as it did not take into account the potential loss for Novatris for having no return on the millions of pounds they made investing in a drug which rival companies can manufacture very cheaply.

If only they could have free healthcare from the state, things would be so different.