MPhil History 2020, School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi.
J Hist Med Allied Sci. 2020 Oct 1;75(4):408-428. doi: 10.1093/jhmas/jraa027.
This paper investigates the history of drugs sold as "patent medicines" in India in the early twentieth century. The paper investigates their legitimacy as patenting of medicines was forbidden by the Indian Patents and Designs Act, 1911 (IPDA). The paper argues that the instrument of letters patents functioning as the prerogative of the Crown that gave monopolistic rights to grantees to sell any compound without having to disclose its constituents was the reason behind this seemingly conflicting historical relationship between the law and the market. Colonial law-making left sufficient space within the ambit of the IPDA for letters patents to have their ill effects. The colonial state made attempts to address this as a public health issue by incorporating concerns related to this class of medicines within regulations addressed to the drugs market in the 1930s. The currency of patent medicines in the market was further added to by Indian indigenous entrepreneurs fueled by cultural nationalism of Swadeshi ideology in Bengal in the early twentieth century. However, even such indigenous responses or attempts at hybridization of manufacturing and selling practices related to patent medicines were mostly informed by upper-caste/ upper-class interests and not so much by those of consumers of these medicines.
本文探讨了 20 世纪初印度销售的“专利药品”的历史。本文研究了它们的合法性，因为 1911 年《印度专利和设计法案》（IPDA）禁止了药品专利。本文认为，作为授予授予人销售任何化合物而无需披露其成分的垄断权利的特权工具的专利证书，是法律和市场之间这种看似矛盾的历史关系的背后原因。殖民立法在《印度专利和设计法案》的范围内为专利证书留下了足够的空间，使其产生了不良影响。殖民国家试图通过将与这类药品相关的问题纳入 20 世纪 30 年代针对药品市场的法规，来解决这一公共卫生问题。20 世纪初，孟加拉的本土企业家受到印度本土民族主义 Swadeshi 思想的推动，进一步增加了专利药品在市场上的流通。然而，即使是这种本土的回应或对与专利药品相关的制造和销售实践的杂交尝试，也主要是由上层阶级/上层阶级的利益驱动的，而不是这些药品的消费者的利益驱动的。
