India's patent office came down on the side of pharma giant AstraZeneca ($AZN) when it rejected a compulsory license application filed by Hyderabad-based Lee Pharma.
Lee had sought to force the license on AstraZeneca's Onglyza (saxagliptin) diabetes drug, claiming in its original 2015 application that the drug did not meet the "reasonable" requirements of the public, was not available at a reasonably affordable price and was not made in India.
The patent office said Lee Pharma failed to prove how the reasonableness tests for the public were not being met and said Lee was "assuming" that the product was not being made available in the necessary quantities at an affordable price, according to a report in the Economic Times.
Lee said it will appeal the decision to the country's Intellectual Property Appellate Board and told the newspaper it was offering an alternative treatment that was 300% lower than the price of branded drugs on the market.
As FiercePharmaAsia reported in November, to date the country has only granted one compulsory license that allowed Natco to produce a generic version of Bayer's Nexavar for kidney and liver cancers.
- here's the report from The Economic Times