Compulsory licensing is a negotiating tool but not a panacea

This is an interesting column from yesterday’s Indian Express on pharma compulsory licensing as a negotiating tool to achieve tiered pricing of innovative products. It is more nuanced and thoughtful than most writing on the subject and points out that generics will meetonly the needs of the middle class in the absence of universal health insurance coverage: the poor cannot afford even the generic versions of new drugs.  Shamnad Basheer is the Ministry of HRD Professor of IP Law at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences  in Kolkata