An export consignment from India belonging to Ind-Swift on its route to Venezuela was seized by customs authorities of Netherlands last month on charges of it being counterfeit. The drug was pantoprazole, in pellets form to be made into formulations in Venezuela, where Ind-Swift already has a marketing right for the product. The company sources say that the Netherlands authorities seized the consignment as it does not have marketing rights in the EU. When the consignment is not meant for the European markets and the exporter concerned is only using the European port for transit, it is unfair to detain such cargo. Apart from this case, there are more such reports of in transit pharmaceutical cargo from India being detained by the European port authorities on same grounds in recent months. According to Pharmexcil, the reason EU has given for the seizures was that these drug consignments violated intellectual property rights and are, therefore, counterfeit. It has to be understood that such actions from EU countries come after WHO's recent move to bring a new definition to counterfeit medicines on the basis of a proposal by the WHO-backed International Medical Products Anti-Counterfeiting Taskforce. WHO's initiative to combat counterfeiting in drugs is understandable considering the fact that such products are posing a serious threat to public health.
WHO defines counterfeit drugs as medicines which are deliberately and fraudulently mislabelled with respect to identity or source. The definition covers both branded and generic products with correct ingredients but fake packaging, with wrong ingredients, without active ingredients or with insufficient active ingredients. The change in the proposed IMPACT definition seeks to drop the terms "deliberately and fraudulently" and adds the word "history" along with identity or source, and changes the terms "fraudulently mislabelled" to "false representation". It has been somewhat clear for some time that brand companies of the US and Europe have been in danger of losing a major part of their market for branded products not only in those countries but also in developing world with increasing acceptance of generic drugs by the medical community and patients worldwide. Generic drugs are cheap substitutes to expensive branded drugs and Indian companies have emerged as leading suppliers of these drugs to the world during last ten years. This position of Indian pharma companies has been hurting the profitability of top brand companies and they have been conspiring to stifle the growth of generic products by all means. What IMPACT is trying to do is just this on behalf of big pharma. Here, there may be issues pertaining to intellectual property rights between the generic companies and the brand companies. But, it is wrong to mix up patents and patent infringement issues with counterfeiting and piracy by European nations. The government of India has to take up the case of Indian pharmaceutical exporters with EU authorities for indulging in such unfair practices in the international trade.