Compulsory Licensing in India

A compulsory license can be defined as a authorization given by the Government to a person for the exploitation of a patent without the consent of the patent holder. This obviously works against the interest of the patent holder but compulsory licenses are considered as a necessity in certain cases like cases of national emergency, health crisis and like. Even TRIPS allows flexibilities in the form of compulsory licenses on the fulfillment of certain prerequisite conditions. Indian Patent Act has many sections devoted to the grant of compulsory licenses. Laws have been detailed in the Act on this issue. It gives a discretionary powers on the Controller under certain circumstances to decide on applications of compulsory licenses. Detailed procedure is also given in the Act. It seems that most of the provisions of our patent act relating to compulsory licenses conform to the TRIPS agreement. In keeping with the waiver of the requirement of domestic production under Article 31(f) of TRIPS in the August 30, 2003 decision, Section 92A of Indian Patents Act has been enacted.