Compulsory licensing of patents under Section 84 of the Patents Act, 1970 lets any interested person apply, three years after a patent is granted, for a licence to work the invention without the patentee’s consent. It rests on three statutory grounds: the reasonable requirements of the public are not being met, the invention is not available at a reasonably affordable price, or it is not worked in the territory of India. India has granted exactly one such licence in its history, for the anti-cancer drug Nexavar in 2012, and two later applications were rejected. That single grant, and those two refusals, still define how every Section 84 dispute is argued today.<\/p>\n
This article sets out the three grounds, the step-by-step Section 84 procedure, the terms that follow a grant, the landmark case trilogy, and how the section compares with Sections 92 and 92A.<\/p>\n
The route is used almost entirely by generic manufacturers, and almost entirely in pharmaceuticals. The 2012 Nexavar order collapsed the price of a month’s cancer therapy from roughly Rs 2,84,428 to roughly Rs 8,880, and that figure still anchors the debate over what an “affordable” price means in Indian patent law.<\/p>\n
The threshold, though, is harder to clear than the headline suggests. Of the three landmark applications filed under this provision, only one succeeded, and the two failures turned on procedure and evidence rather than on public health. That grant-versus-rejection contrast is the lens this piece uses throughout.<\/p>\n
Compulsory licensing of patents under Section 84 of the Patents Act, 1970 lets any interested person apply, three years after a patent is granted, for a licence to work the invention without the patentee’s consent. It is granted on three grounds: the public’s reasonable requirements are unmet, the invention is not available at a reasonably affordable price, or it is not worked in India.<\/p>\n\n