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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Court allows Cipla to market disputed drug

The Delhi High Court today passed an interim order allowing domestic drug firm Cipla to market its version of a lung cancer treatment drug for which Swiss multinational Roche Scientific holds the India patent, pending another hearing scheduled for August 6.

The interim order was passed by the court today on a plea filed by Roche Scientific on January 19 this year. The generic name of the drug is Erlotnib, which Roche markets as Tarceva and Cipla as Erlocip.

Ahead of the next hearing, the court has asked Cipla to maintain records of sales of Erlocip.

It has also admitted the counter-claim filed by Cipla that questions the validity of the Roche patent and asked the latter to respond within four weeks from today.

The case, which is being keenly watched by global and Indian drug firms and consumer interest groups, is the first test case of India’s new patent regime.

The new patent law came into effect on January 1, 2005, and offers firms product patent protection against the earlier practice of process patent protection, which effectively allowed firms to make the same drug through a different process.

Days before Roche sought legal redress, Cipla started marketing the drug for Rs 1,600 a tablet, one-third the price Roche charges (Rs 4,800 a tablet). Roche has been selling Erlotinib under the brand name Tarceva in India since 2006.

The crux of Roche’s argument is that the product patent right it has for Tarceva prevents competition from manufacturing a copy-cat version of the drug.

In response, Cipla has claimed that the Indian patent is not valid and argued that it was well within its rights to manufacture and market the medicine in the country.

The counsel for Cipla said the high court’s order today made special mention of the life-threatening nature of cancer and the life-saving properties of this drug.

“Given the price difference, the court did not want patients to be deprived of a low-cost alternative by staying sales of the generic product,” the counsel claimed.

Today’s decision will ensure uninterrupted supply of a low-cost medicine for treating lung cancer. Nearly 160,000 people in the country are estimated to be suffering from the disease, which has a high fatality rate.

Welcoming the interim verdict, the Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAI) Chairman Y K Sapru said he was glad to note “the judiciary has given preference to the right of a human being to live over all other rights enshrined under the Constitution of India”.

1 comment:

aditi said...

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Understanding Short Term Trading

Before I begin, this blog is not for intraday traders. My definition of short term implies duration of around 2 to 3 months.

Short Term stock picking is no rocket science, but rather a visual interpretation of technical charts. A basic moving average on a time frame chart will show the direction of the securities movement.

Moving averages is a mathematical results calculated by averaging a number of past data points. Moving averages (MA) in it's basic form is calculated by taking the arithmetic mean of a given set of values on a rolling window of timeframe. Once the value of MA has been calculated, they are plotted onto a chart and then connected to create a moving average line. Typical moving averages used for short term trading are 50 MA and 100 MA.

Types of Moving Averages

1) Simple Moving Average (SMA)

SMA is calculated by taking the arithmetic mean of a given set of values on a rolling window of timeframe. The usefulness of the SMA is limited because each point in the data series is weighted the same, regardless of where it occurs in the sequence. Critics argue that the most recent data is more significant than the older data and should have a greater influence on the final result.

2) Exponential Moving Average (EMA)

EMA overcomes the limits of SMA, where more weight is given to the recent prices in an attempt to make it more responsive to new information. When calculating the first point of the EMA, we may notice that there is no value available to use as the previous EMA. This small problem can be solved by starting the calculation with a simple moving average and continuing on with calculating the EMA.

The primary functions of a moving average is to identify trends and reversals, measure the strength of an asset's momentum and determine potential areas where an asset will find support or resistance. Moving averages are lagging indicator, which means they do not predict new trend, but confirm trends once they have been established.

A stock is deemed to be in an uptrend when the price is above a moving average and the average is sloping upward. Conversely, a trader will use a price below a downward sloping average to confirm a downtrend. Many traders will only consider holding a long position in an asset when the price is trading above a moving average.

In general, short-term momentum can be gauged by looking at moving averages that focus on time periods of 50 days or less. Looking at moving averages that are created with a period of 50 to 100 days is generally regarded as a good measure of medium-term momentum. Finally, any moving average that uses 100 days or more in the calculation can be used as a measure of long-term momentum.

Support, resistence and stoploss can be infered by referring the closet MA below or above the market price. The other factor that is used in short term momentum is the trading volume. The moving averages along with the trading volume can provide a better insight to short term movement.

Markets are moved by their largest participants - I believe this is the single most important principle in short-term trading. Accordingly, I track the presence of large traders by determining how much volume is in the market and how that compares to average. Because volume correlates very highly with volatility, the market's relative volume helps you determine the amount of movement likely at any given time frame--and it helps you handicap the odds of trending vs. remaining slow and range bound.