Greg Kalbaugh, director of USIBC, said: 'Incremental innovations are not small achievements.'

Giving an example, he said: 'Heat stable version of anti-retro viral drugs may not be critically important to people in large cities where there is easy access to electricity and refrigeration, but they are surely important to people in rural areas.'

'Citizens in rural areas deserve to know that when they take an important drug, it is going to work whether they have access to refrigeration or not. Unfortunately, section 3 (d) of Indian patent law actively discourages that sort of innovations,' Kalbaugh argued.

He also said that 65 percent of the drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration between 1989 and 2000 are incremental innovations.

Shahani, who is also the managing director of Novartis India, said: 'By talking about patent for incremental innovation, they are not shifting their focus from generic drugs.'