India Just Redrew the Map on Cross-Border Discovery

Summary

An appellate ruling by the Madras High Court in Softgel Healthcare v. Pfizer refused to execute U.S. Letters Rogatory seeking manufacturing records from an Indian API supplier, citing four provisions of the Hague Evidence Convention. The court rejected the request as overly broad, protected the non‑party witness, invoked the refusal of a related Indian patent application, and applied India’s qualified declaration against pre‑trial discovery. The decision has been appealed to the Indian Supreme Court, which has taken the case as a matter of national policy and may set a binding standard for foreign discovery requests involving Indian entities. The outcome could dramatically limit the use of Hague Convention mechanisms for obtaining evidence in U.S. Hatch‑Waxman patent litigations that rely on Indian generic supply chains.