U.S. Tries to Force India to Accept Medieval Patent Rules

That would have been a reasonable headline for a NYT article on India's resistance to U.S.-type patent rights on expensive drugs. The focus of the piece is Herceptin, a cancer drug that costs $18,000 for a single round of treatment, which makes it unaffordable to almost anyone suffering from cancer in India. A generic version of this drug would likely cost two or three percent of this price.

As a result of the enormous price difference between patent protected drugs and free market drugs the...