Law and other scholars from India describe Indian patent law and the legal effects of patent rights, including the main benefits, types, and costs of the patent system, and the role of patents in innovation, the dissemination of knowledge, and technology transfer and the commercialization of new technology; specific pricing policies of medicines in India and other countries; the impact of national and international regulations on the Indian genetic drugs industry;
parallel importing; exclusions on patentability; intellectual property and compulsory licensing in pharmaceuticals; the intellectual property rights system and traditional knowledge; Colgate-PalmoliveAEs attempt to patent a mouthwash formula; and tools for accessing patent information in India.
Parallel importing, the act of importing non-counterfeit products from other countries in which the product is sold more cheaply, has the potential to significantly benefit Australian consumers.
Parallel importing has attracted increasing interest in the international practice, and concern to manufacturers and retailers since the mid-1980s (Mitchell 1998; Eagle et al.
of "
parallel importing" by buying abroad without permission of the copyright owners.
Parallel importing of medicines to exploit national price differentials and free movement of goods between the various EU member states has provoked strong controversy in the pharmaceutical industry, blaming the 70 parallel market businesses for loss in earnings of 1.5 billion per year (the equivalent of the parallel market's annual turnover).
Perhaps the bigger problem to be tackled, though, is the illegal practice of
parallel importing. "Parallel imports are a very serious problem for (indie distribs)," said Woody Tsung, chief exec of the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Assn.
Parallel importing describes a practice whereby a country imports goods for resale without authorization from the original seller.
[Apparently paragraph (b) refers primarily to
parallel importing of medicines made by the patent holder and sold by the patent holder at discount elsewhere in the world.
The Japanese Supreme Court explained that an implied license arises through the act of a sale, wherein all of the seller's rights related to the goods are transferred to the buyer.(193) However, the court explained that the seller could prevent parallel importation by placing restrictions on the rights conferred through selling the patented invention.(194) First, the patentee may prevent the, buyer from
parallel importing by contract, wherein the buyer may not resell the goods in Japan.(195) Second, the patentee may prevent third parties and subsequent buyers from
parallel importing by placing notice of the agreement on the goods.(196)
Parallel importing would allow South Africa to import desperately needed medicines from countries where they were available for less--sometimes far less--than a drug company would charge in South Africa.
That law authorized Pretoria to use two mechanisms to get AIDS drugs to those who so desperately need them:
parallel importing (enabling importers to buy the drugs from the cheapest source available worldwide) and compulsory licensing (enabling local companies to make the drugs at a fraction of their cost to US consumers), both legal under the World Trade Organization's agreements on intellectual property.
With TRIPS greatly constraining countries' intellectual property policy options to lower drug prices, consumer and public health advocates, as well as a few developing country governments, began to turn their attention to two TRIPS-legal policy tools: compulsory licensing and
parallel importing.