India Launches Traditional Knowledge Database
According to Gavin Rabinowitz writing for the Associated Press, a 2003 study by India's National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR) claims that "some 7 000 patents worldwide are based on Indian indigenous knowledge." The group has therefore "convened a group of 150 experts in traditional medicine, scientists, doctors, patent lawyers and computer programmers to put together the Traditional Knowledge Database Library (TKDL) ."
According to the TKDL demo website,
Since time immemorial, India has possessed a rich traditional knowledge of waysand means practiced to treat diseases afflicting people. This knowledge hasgenerally been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Someof them have been described in ancient classical and other literature, ofteninaccessible to the common man. Documentation of this existing knowledge,available in public domain, on various traditional systems of medicine hasbecome imperative to safeguard the sovereignty of this traditional knowledge andto protect them from being misused in patenting on non-original discoveries, andthis has been a matter of national concern.
Since time immemorial, India has possessed a rich traditional knowledge of waysand means practiced to treat diseases afflicting people. This knowledge hasgenerally been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Someof them have been described in ancient classical and other literature, ofteninaccessible to the common man. Documentation of this existing knowledge,available in public domain, on various traditional systems of medicine hasbecome imperative to safeguard the sovereignty of this traditional knowledge andto protect them from being misused in patenting on non-original discoveries, andthis has been a matter of national concern.
India fought successfully the revocation of turmeric and basmati patents granted by United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and neem patent granted by European Patent Office (EPO). As a sequel to this, in 1999, the Department of ISM&H constituted an inter-disciplinary Task Force, for preparing a report on establishing a TKDL.
TKDL is a collaborative project between NISCAIR (erstwhile NISCOM) andDepartment of Indian System of Medicine and Homoeopathy (ISM&H), Ministry ofHealth and Family Welfare which been implemented at NISCAIR. An inter-disciplinary team of 25 Ayurveda experts, 1 patent examiner, 5 IT experts, 3 NISCAIR scientists and 4 technical officers are in place at present for carrying out the work.
TKDL will give legitimacy to the existing traditional knowledge and enable protection of such information from getting patented by the fly-by-night inventors acquiring patents on our traditional knowledge systems. The project TKDL proposes to document the knowledge available in public domain by sifting and collating the information on traditional knowledge from the existing literature covering Ayurveda, in digitized format in five international languages which are English, German, French, Japanese and Spanish.
Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC), an innovative structuredclassification system for the purpose of systematic arrangement, disseminationand retrieval has been evolved for about 5000 subgroups against one group ininternational patent classification, i.e. AK61K35/78 related to medicinalplants.
Rodney D. Ryder
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