Novartis attempted to change Section 3d of the Indian Patent Act of 2005, which permits the manufacture of low-cost life-saving generic drugs for the world's poor, by only allowing drug patents of new medicines if they are significantly more effective. The case highlights the conflict between public health interests and intellectual property rights.

When Novartis filed for a patent on its leukemia drug Glivec, India’s patent office ruled the drug was simply a new form of an existing treatment that was developed before 1995. It was India's first-ever drug patent rejection. Novartis was selling Glivec in India at a cost of 26,000 dollars a year per patient, while generic versions of the drug in India cost about 2,100 dollars per patient per year.

Novartis said the ruling will have long-term negative consequences for research and development. The company also claimed that the law was not in compliance with TRIPS (the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).

India has become the pharmacy of the world's poor: more than half of all the developing world's HIV/AIDS patients rely on low-cost generic drugs from the country. 

“This is a huge relief for millions of patients and doctors in developing countries who depend on affordable medicines from India,” Tido von Schoen-Angerer, Director of the Doctors Without Borders Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, said in a statement.

"The Court's decision now makes Indian patents on the medicines that we desperately need less likely. We call upon multinational drug companies and wealthy countries to leave the Indian Patents Act alone and stop pushing for ever stricter patent regimes in developing countries."