Indian Traditional Knowledge Digital Library Website of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani

Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) created by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Indian Union Health Ministry's Department of Ayush has documented over 200,000 formulations of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani to save them from piracy. TKDL website will help in successfully thwarting attempts made by foreigners in getting patent on existing ancient Indian formulations.

Kounteya Sinha Writes in Times of India

After eight years of toil, over 200 scientists and researchers from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Union health ministry's department of Ayush have scientifically converted information of traditional Indian medicine from Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Tamil to five international languages - English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish.

According to Dr V P Gupta from CSIR who created TKDL, India would lose 2,000 new patents every year without such a digital library.

In the past, patents have been granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) on the use of over 285 Indian medicinal plants such as papaya, Indian long pepper, kali tulsi, pudina, ginger, aloe, isabgol, aaonla, jira, soybean, tomato, almond, walnut and methi.

This is why India has now also signed a landmark agreement with the EPO. Under the three-year agreement, which came into effect on February 3, TKDL's database would be available to the patent examiners at EPO (34 member states) ‘for establishing prior art’, in case of patent applications based on Indian systems of medicine (ISM).

You can visit the official website of Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) here.



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Posted by Abhilash Rajendran on 10.2.09

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was ecstatic when I read about the creation of the TKDL and the efforts made to retain for mankind what the Universe/the gods made available to all in the first place- for free or for a small sum.

Blessings to all involved. May other countries follow your example and keep the multinational pharmaceutical companies from profiting from mankind's maladies.

Flavia Lucato
NSW
Australia
....a long time user and supporter of nature's bounty to keep healthy and in tune with Nature.

February 28, 2009 at 8:40 AM
R S PRAVEEN RAJ said...

Potential Misuse of TKDL is very likely. Please see this news item titled "Traditional Knowledge: Concern on access pact" by Vinson Kurian

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan. 24

The access agreement that India has signed with foreign patent offices to share Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) in the form of a ‘prior art' could undermine its confidentiality.

'Prior art' is meant to encompass everything that has been published, presented or otherwise disclosed to public on the date of patent and includes documents in foreign languages disclosed in any format in any country.

“I wonder how confidentiality can be maintained if TKDL is treated as a prior art, says Mr R. S. Praveen Raj, who was formerly an examiner with the India Patent Office and presently scientist with the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST).

TKDL contains approximately 2.08 lakh formulations based on Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga. These have been transcribed in five international languages viz. English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese, with the objective of preventing its misappropriation at international patent offices.

Access agreement has been signed with the European Patent Office (EPO) and US Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) on the premise that the database shall be used for search and examination only and shall not make any third party disclosure except for the purpose of giving a copy to the inventor/applicant as citation. But it is hard for the patent offices to keep the contents of TKDL secret from third parties, since no patent could be denied without disclosing the entire gamut of coded traditional knowledge (TK) associated with the invention to the claimant, says Mr Raj.

Great opportunity

It is going to be a great opportunity for fraudsters to file patent applications purely on conceptual grounds (as if they had performed the invention) since they could hope to fetch authentic information on a TK practice/product.

While codification of TK in digital libraries and sharing the same with patent offices is a viable solution to direct misappropriation, it is feared that it may provide an excuse for capitalists to effect private appropriation by making cosmetic improvements on such traditional knowledge that is not accessible otherwise.

TKDL may indeed be the right strategy to prevent the direct misappropriation of TK already in public domain and known to a large cross-section of people.

But it is learnt that the concept of TKDL is being extended to enable codification of community-owned TK also. In this case, it is a clear injustice to those communities if TK of this nature is shared with patent offices, Mr Raj said.

Instead, he has floated the idea of a Traditional Knowledge Docketing System (TKDS) that may indicate the location at which a particular TK is available, the community that possesses it, a short description on its nature and the protocol set by the communities/TK holders for accessing the same.

February 20, 2010 at 9:00 PM
R S PRAVEEN RAJ said...

Kerala IPR policy resolves issues in Knowledge sharing (News in Hindu Business Line dated Feb. 12, 2010)

The IPR policy of the Kerala Government released in 2008 may have prescribed the perfect antidote for a perceived glitch in the national Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) that lends itself to private appropriation by vested interests.

Codification of traditional knowledge (TK) in digital libraries and sharing the same with patent offices may be a viable solution to direct misappropriation, but it still leaves scope for cosmetic improvements on TK that is not accessible otherwise.

The proposal to enable codification of community-owned TK further compounds the issue, according to Mr R.S. Praveen Raj, a former examiner with India Patent Office and currently a scientist with the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST) here.

This amounts to gross injustice being perpetrated on those communities whose TK comes to be shared with patent offices.

The Kerala IPR policy squarely addresses this problem, Mr Raj said. The policy document proposes to commit all traditional knowledge, including traditional medicines, to the realm of “knowledge commons” and not to the public domain.

Knowledge commons refers to the knowledge which is the collectively produced sphere of ideas and which is left unencumbered for the greater benefit of all.

The ownership is attributable to the State/Crown, given the fact that TK is an accumulated traditional wealth and a preserve of its practitioners, tribal communities and families, all of whom act as deemed “trustees” of the State/Crown.

Hence, the intention of the proposed legislation is “not exactly the creation of rights on TK” but assigning some (not all) of the rights owned by the State to those deemed trustees in lieu of their willingness to put the TK to the realm of knowledge commons.

While the policy envisages proprietary rights on traditional knowledge, all the right holders will be deemed to be holding their rights under a “commons licence”, wherein the right holders will permit others the use of the knowledge in their possession for non-commercial purposes.

It is further stipulated that any development made using this knowledge licenced under the above obligation should be put back to the realm of knowledge commons, hence denying the scope of patenting thereof.

Though the policy envisages putting the developments made on TK back to the realm of knowledge commons, path-breaking inventions like development of a new drug molecule or the process thereof which involves substantial developmental costs need not form a part even if TK may form the basis of its origin, Mr Raj said.

The ultimate aim of the legislation is not to protect the financial interests of the TK holders but the benefit of the society at large, as is the case with the fundamental concept of patents. The Kerala IPR policy does not support extending “trade secret” protection to TK and the State has expressed itself against creation of monopoly over knowledge.

February 20, 2010 at 9:05 PM
NAVEEN said...

That was very informative and well written. Mentioned below is an excerpt of an article on Path breaking inventions.

"Computing started when humans started analyzing based on numbers. In earlier times, people used various methods for the purpose of calculation. For example, papyrus helped early man to record languages and numbers. Later Abacus made of beads took charge as an arithmetic processing device. Since then processing units kept evolving. However, a major breakthrough came when zero and binary system was invented by Indians........”read more at http://www.sinapseblog.com/search/label/Pathbreaking%20inventions

December 2, 2010 at 11:47 AM
Indian T.v Serials said...

The Kanis mostly live in and around the Reserved Forest areas of Thiruvananthapuram district. They would, therefore, require the permission of the Forest Department (FD) for harvesting the plant, which has not been forthcoming because of fears that commercial harvesting would threaten conservation of the plant. This has also been compounded by incidents of pilferage of the plant by non-tribals. There is also no uniform view among the Kanis, some of whom have objected to the manner in which the "arrangement" with TBGRI evolved. Activists have also raised issues of whether indigenous knowledge is being adequately protected and rewarded in this arrangement.

TBGRI and AVP, however, believe that there are means to sustainably harvest the plant in the forest area, that are not being sufficiently explored. This and other issues of benefit-sharing and equity will need to be resolved, if this novel initiative is to become a model for the country.

April 7, 2011 at 11:52 AM
Bye Video said...

make sure that they know the facts so that they can correct inaccuracies and keep people up to date with what is happening

August 2, 2011 at 11:09 PM
Forum | Bye Video said...

thanks for sharing info

October 5, 2011 at 10:41 PM
www.Cohnpatents.com said...

The resources in question are predominantly from developing countries, and are the subject of patent applications by companies in developed countries.

June 22, 2012 at 11:35 AM

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