Access Over Exclusivity: India’s Patent Law And The Juridical Mendicancy Of Global Health Equity
- IJLLR Journal
- Jul 10, 2025
- 2 min read
Mohd. Saifullah Khan, LLM, Aligarh Muslim University
Fardeen Khan, Research Scholar, Aligarh Muslim University
ABSTRACT
Post-TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, 1995), the moral and legal tension between intellectual property rights and the human right to health has become the most crucial challenge, especially for developing countries. India has evolved into an important site of judicial decision-making on patent law not just in the service of trade law but, constitutional obligations toting social justice, the Article 21 right to live and public health equity. Summary of The Paper This paper examines the trajectory of Indian patent jurisprudence as a counter narrative to a global dominant paradigm that resounds with market exclusivity over fair accessibility to medicines. The article discusses important statutory provisions, including Section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act, 1970, and the important judgments including Novartis AG v. Union of India (2013) which cumulatively indicate the Indian judiciary's willingness to defy pharmaceutical patenting evergreening and to protect public interest. These decisions provide rights-based reading of TRIPS flexibilities and constructs India as placing itself not as a TRIPS infringer but as a norm entrepreneur in the realm of international pharmaceutical law. The research finds that a stark gap exists in the current academic literature: while the compliance debate prevails, little attention has been paid to the principled legal reasoning engaged in by Indian courts that seeks to mainstream constitutional imperatives with global health commitments. The inquiry concludes, then, that access to essential medicines should not be socially accepted as a policy option, but jurisprudentially required, because it is constitutionally based and framed by international human rights law.
Keywords: Patents, Pharmaceutical Law, Global Health Justice, Constitutional Right to Health, TRIPS Flexibility.
