Morning Briefing

India's patent office "has rejected American drug maker Abbott Laboratories' patent application for an HIV combination drug, allowing low-cost local drug makers to make and sell their generic versions in India and other countries where the medicine is not patented," Economic Times reports (1/4). The drug under consideration was Abbott's "Kaletra, which combines two antivirals, [lopinavir/ritonavir and] is one of the preferred second-line treatments to fight drug-resistant HIV, according to the World Health Organization, which recommends governments include it on their list of essential medicines," Bloomberg/Businessweek writes (Narayan, 1/4).