170 Members of Congress Send Letter to Obama Criticizing India on Intellectual Property

On 18 June 2013, 170 Members of Congress sent a letter to President Obama criticizing India for its “intellectual property climate.” In particular, the letter criticizes recent decisions in the Indian courts, including a specific attack on India’s first compulsory license granted on Nexavar/sorafenib. The letter states that “It has been reported that additional drugs may be subject to CLs imminently and that the decisions related to these CLs are beng improperly driven by an interest in growing the pharmaceutical market in India.”

Additionally, the letter cites the USPTO’s statistics claiming that 30 percent of the American work force are employed by intellectual property intensive industries. As noted by KEI previously, however, that USPTO report contained misleading data and more than eighty-three percent of those “IP-intensive” jobs were actually employed by those industries considered to be “trademark intensive”; grocery stores were listed as the top IP-intensive industry.

The full text of the letter, along with the signatories to the letter, is attached below.

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