Why can India, by becoming a third world pharmacy through generic drugs, be able to deliver them globally, but we cannot? Although India's industry is not developed, it has reached a high level in generic drugs. In India, the price of generic versions of similar drugs can reach one-tenth the price of the original drug. However, one thing to note is that generic drugs in India are not "fake drugs" and their pharmacology and efficacy are no different from the original drugs.
Many people think that India’s manufacturing of generic drugs is a tacit approval of Western countries, which is actually a mistake. Every drug has a patent expiration date, after which any country can copy it. In addition, the international community also has "compulsory licensing rules for pharmaceutical patents." This means that when a country experiences a public health crisis, it may gain the right to produce medicines. There is a loophole here.
Generally speaking, every new drug development requires a patent application. There is a patent law for medicines in India that dates back to the British colonial period. However, since India was a colony at that time, Indians purchased common medicines at high prices. It was not until 1947 that India finally became independent and began to revise its patent laws. In the ten years from 1949 to 1959, people from all walks of life in India spent a lot of energy, financial and material resources on preliminary research. It was not until 1970 that the new Indian Patent Act was published. Later India enacted a patent law that allowed Indian pharmaceutical companies to copy and produce all medicines without having to obtain drug patents from Western countries. It doesn't matter that generic drugs are allowed to be produced in India, so Indian pharmaceutical companies just need to copy it. They only have manufacturing costs and no R&D costs. In other words, India’s patent laws can only protect pharmaceutical technology, not pharmaceutical ingredients.
Initially, many countries around the world that hold drug patents expressed anger at India's actions and even threatened to sanction it. However, India always deceives these countries and the international community on the grounds that its country is weak and its people are poor, and then continues to engage in the pharmaceutical industry. After all, he did not join the WTO.
Of course, with the rise of Indian generic drugs, multinational pharmaceutical companies will naturally not allow more Indian generic drugs to be launched. Otherwise, it will just sit there and die. The WTO also knows that it must also safeguard the right of multinational corporations to exist so that generic drugs will have a future. Therefore, countries that join after India cannot enjoy the same patent treatment as India, and the WTO has begun to implement patent protection.