Rule 43 of the Patents Rules, 2003
Omitted provision
An omitted rule from the exclusive marketing rights chapter; the scheme it served carried safeguards, including a compulsory licence route.
Official legal text
When a provision is removed, the rest of the statute is not renumbered. The number stays in place, marked as omitted, so that everything after it keeps its familiar citation. That is why this number still appears, and why older files, textbooks and judgments continue to refer to it.
Read this as a plain-language summary. If it and the official text, or a relevant Gazette notification, say different things, the official text and the notification are what count.
What this rule requires, step by step
The transitional scheme was never intended to give an unchecked monopoly over the sale of a medicine or an agricultural chemical. The chapter of the Act that created exclusive marketing rights also contained safeguards, including a power to grant a compulsory licence where the price or availability of the article in India was a problem, and a special provision protecting sellers who were already dealing in the article. The procedural rules in the omitted chapter of the Patents Rules stood behind those safeguards.
Those safeguards vanished with the right they qualified, when the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005 omitted the chapter. Indian law did not lose the underlying policy, though. The Act still contains a full compulsory licensing framework for granted patents, which can be invoked where reasonable requirements of the public are not met, where the patented invention is not available at a reasonably affordable price, or where it is not worked in India. There are also separate provisions for use by the Government and for public health emergencies. The tools moved; the concern behind them did not.
Why this rule matters
Public health researchers, policy analysts and anyone tracing the history of access safeguards in Indian patent law.
Historically, for the period when exclusive marketing rights were available.
Nothing today. The current safeguards sit in the compulsory licensing and government use provisions of the Act.
Believing that India's access safeguards disappeared with the transitional scheme, when in fact they were carried into the permanent regime.
How it works in practice
A policy note on access safeguards
A Chennai non-profit working on access to medicines asked a volunteer lawyer to prepare a short history of safeguards in Indian patent law. He built a single page. In the transitional era, the chapter creating exclusive marketing rights carried its own brake, allowing a licence to be ordered where the price or supply of an article in India was unsatisfactory. When that chapter went in 2005, the brake went with it. What replaced it was broader: the compulsory licence provisions that apply to any granted patent after the statutory waiting period, the provisions on government use and acquisition, and the grounds on which a patent can be revoked. The volunteer's conclusion was that the removal of the transitional safeguards did not weaken the position, because they were replaced by permanent provisions that apply across the whole patent system rather than to one narrow category of product.
Simplified illustration only. Actual legal outcomes depend on the facts.
Key points to remember
- The abolished chapter contained its own access safeguards, including a compulsory licence route.
- Those safeguards were omitted in 2005 along with the right they qualified.
- The Act's general compulsory licensing and government use provisions apply to granted patents today.
Connected provisions
Because this page covers a rule rather than a section, the related Act provisions are shown in their own list. The section tells you what the law requires. The rule, explained above, tells you how the Patent Office expects that requirement to be met.
Forms, deadlines and fees
Fees are prescribed in the First Schedule to the Patents Rules. Because the Schedule is revised from time to time, and charges different amounts to different categories of applicant and for physical as against electronic filing, this page describes the fee without stating a figure. How Indian patent fees work.
Related judgments
Case summaries are published only after a qualified reviewer has checked the judgment, the citation and the way the holding is described. Nothing has cleared that review for this provision yet, so nothing is listed here. We would rather show no case note than one that misstates what a court decided. How case notes are prepared.
Questions people ask about Rule 43
Does India still have compulsory licensing for medicines?
Yes. The Patents Act contains a general compulsory licensing framework that applies to granted patents once the statutory waiting period after grant has passed. An application can be made on grounds including that the reasonable requirements of the public are not being met, that the invention is not available at a reasonably affordable price, or that it is not worked in India. There are separate provisions dealing with government use, national emergencies and export to countries with insufficient manufacturing capacity.
What happened to the safeguards attached to exclusive marketing rights?
They were omitted with the rest of that chapter in 2005, because they existed only to qualify a right that no longer exists. The policy behind them was not abandoned. The permanent provisions on compulsory licensing, government use, revocation and the exclusions from patentability now carry that role, and they apply to every patent rather than only to medicines and agricultural chemicals covered by the transitional arrangement.
Researching access safeguards in Indian patent law?
MYCrave Consultancy advises on compulsory licensing, working requirements and government use under the current Act.
You will be speaking with MYCrave Consultancy & Services, the firm that operates this platform. General questions are answered free; matter‑specific work is quoted before anything is done.