The Hindu Business Line : Cipla export consignment too seized at Amsterdam

Details on the size of Cipla’s consignment and the type of medicines being exported were not available, but the company official indicated that Cipla has abandoned the consignment as the cost of litigation was disproportionate to the value of the consignment.

P.T. Jyothi Datta

Mumbai, Feb. 3 It is not just drug makers Ind-Swift and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories’ export consignments that were confiscated by Customs authorities in Amsterdam in the last three-odd months on the grounds of patent infringement.

Home-spun drug major Cipla too has encountered a similar problem about a month ago.

Cipla’s export consignment to Peru was seized at Amsterdam, a company source confirmed.

The Cipla Chairman, Dr Yusuf K. Hamied, condemned the attempt to link intellectual property with the counterfeit issue, which is essentially about the quality of the medicine.

If the concern was about counterfeiting, then authorities should look at fake and frivolous patents, besides their ever-greening, he told Business Line.

In the past incidents faced by Indian drug makers, Ind-Swift’s consignment was headed for Venezuela and Dr Reddy’s was for Brazil.

Dr Reddy’s consignment of generic hypertension-related medicine Losartan, valued at $55,000, has been released and is now back in India.

The release followed a discussion with Merck/Dupont, the patent holders on Losartan, and whose patent on the drug is protected in the Netherlands until September 2009.

Meanwhile, the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council has written to its members asking them to report such incidents where goods being transhipped through European ports are being seized under patent protection laws in Europe.

“This is being done in Europe though the products in transit are not meant for European markets and are also not protected for patents in the countries of destination,” the letter said.

Refuting reports that a Ranbaxy consignment too met with a similar fate, Ranbaxy’s spokesperson, Mr Ramesh Adige, observed that such incidents in Europe were happening because of the wrong interpretation of a 2003 customs notification in the European Commission.

It is merely a case of transhipment (where goods transit through a country without being offloaded) and the Centre is taking up the issue with the authorities concerned, he said.

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