The US government has put India in the "priority watch list" under the special 301 report that it releases annually, according to an AFP report. If the report is accurate this will be third year in a row India finds itself in this list - along with Russia and China. The move allows US government to subject India to extra scrutiny and could also impose sanctions if the US brings such cases to the World Trade Organization.
So what is this special 301 report anyway? Well according to the USTR website the report reflects the outcome of a congressionally-mandated annual review of the global state of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and enforcement. This annual review looks at the prevalent environment in US' trading partner countries on whether it encourages innovation and the nature of IPR protection for creative work. This can include copyrights to protect the work of authors or musicians or safeguard inventions in the form of patents that drug use.
What does this mean for India? Especially in the context of how India has used the tool of compulsory licensing to provide drugs to its millions of people at affordable rates. To discuss this CNBC-TV18's Ronojoy Banerjee caught up with senior advocate Prathiba Singh.
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