Patent System

Introduction
A patent is a form of intellectual property which grants the patent holder an exclusive right to an invention. A patent grants the patent owner a negative right to prevent others from making, using, distributing or selling a patented product. A patent owner can choose to exercise such rights personally or can transfer his right through succession or through licensing . The patent in a sense grants the holder a monopoly in the market for a fixed period of time. The ultimate goal of the patent system would be to encourage innovation. The system was devised to incentivize inventiveness and maximize progress in science and technology through the free dissemination of knowledge .
For an applicant to be granted a patent, the invention would have to meet certain standards of patentability such as novelty, utility, non-obviousness etc., and once such standards are met, the exclusive right will be granted to the inventor or his assignee in exchange for the public disclosure of the invention . The rationale behind this is that the inventors will be able to regain what they spent on the research and development of the product due to the exclusive right and it will also increase innovation due to the information regarding the invention being available in the public domain . In this paper we will largely be looking at the innovation in the pharmaceutical industry and how it is impacted by compulsory licensing.
A compulsory license is an authorization granted by the government or national authority for a third party to use, make or sell a patent, without the consent of the patent holder . Section 84 of...

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...ave the concept of compulsory licensing active in India. Due to its status of a developing nation big international companies should not get the wrong idea that they can come to India and charge an outrageous price for their products without any objections from the Indian government because they would be keen on bringing these companies to India.
In my point of view this decision in the Bayer case is one of the many such decisions, which would follow suit, but just because the first case has proved to be useful for the general public and large it does not mean that compulsory licensing is a fixed concept in India now. Going by the past trends it would not be wrong to say that it would take a few good years for India to regularly practice compulsory licensing and its true effects would also only be known only when a few more licenses are issued.