India’s shift from granting only process patents to allowing product patents marked a huge moment in its legal landscape, especially when it comes to medicines and chemicals. The whole journey is about finding a balance between driving innovation and making sure the public can actually get the medicines they need. At the heart of this is Section 5 of the Patents Act, 1970—it kept out product patents for pharmaceuticals and chemicals for decades, letting India build a thriving generic drug industry and keep meds affordable. But India couldn’t hold off change forever. With TRIPS (the WTO’s intellectual property treaty), things had to move. The government set up a transition: introducing the mailbox system and offering Exclusive Marketing Rights (EMR) as halfway measures. The big change came in 2005, when Section 5 was scrapped and product patents returned for pharmacy and chemicals. Instead of opening the floodgates to monopolies, lawmakers added protections like Section 3(d) to stop companies from gaining endless extensions on patents through small, insignificant tweaks. The Novartis case in 2013 put the courts right in the mix, showing they were serious about upholding public interest. Even as India shifted its system, the core idea stuck: make room for innovation, but never at the cost of affordable medicines.