Today with this article I bring to your knowledge about Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (from here on referred as TKDL). TKDL has been in news after India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement that India can win 105 claims on international patents due to its TKDL. He gave this statement at the high-level segment meeting at the Conference of Parties to Convention on Biological Diversity in Hyderabad on 15th October, 2012.
India from a very long time possesses traditional knowledge of medicine which tells us how to treat diseases and even how to find out about them. Generations have passed on this knowledge to newer generations with the word of mouth. Some of this knowledge is also provided in classical literature which is not accessible by common man but even if its accessible than a common man cannot understand it as its in ancient languages which can be understood by only people who have mastered that language. Another fact is that traditional medicine knowledge existed in languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Tamil, making it inaccessible for patent examiners at the international patent offices to verify such claims.
Today with this article I bring to your knowledge about Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (from here on referred as TKDL). TKDL has been in news after India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement that India can win 105 claims on international patents due to its TKDL. He gave this statement at the high-level segment meeting at the Conference of Parties to Convention on Biological Diversity in Hyderabad on 15th October, 2012.
| Specifically TKDL is a database to understand the codified knowledge existing for the Indian Systems of Medicine including Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani and Yoga as prior art. TKDL is also not the prior art in itself; the Books on Indian Systems of Medicine are the prior art which act as the source of information for TKDL. |
| What is present in TKDL?TKDL contains the scanned images of medicinal formulations from the original books. TKDL covers over two lakh formulations which have been taken from Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga texts. It is important to know that TKDL doesn’t contain all the details about existing Indian system of medicine. In TKDL information can be continuously updated with respect to the inputs from the users of the database.The format for information on traditional medicine has been kept standard. E.g. for formulations: |
| · Name of the drug· Origin of the knowledge· Constituents of the drug with their parts used and their quantity · Method of preparation of the drug and usage of the drugs · Bibliographic details |
Where TKDL stands now?
According to the website of TKDL, 150 books have been transcribed on Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga in public domain into34million pages of information and translated into five languages which are English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. Data of more than 95,000 formulations from Ayurveda, about 1,43,000 formulations in Unani and more than 19,000 formulations in Siddha had been already put in the TKDL. TKDL has also signed agreements with European Patent Office (EPO) in 2009, United Kingdom Trademark and Patent Office (UKPTO) in 2010 and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2010 to protect traditional knowledge from biopiracy by giving the examiners at International Patent Office access to the TKDL database for patent search and examination purpose. With patent examiner getting access to TKDL database, legal cases regarding unethical patent claims, which in the past have taken years and vast expenditure for bringing each case to fruition, should be avoided.
Another project to include data relating to 1,500 postures in yoga began in 2008, after new reports of a large number of false gurus and yoga masters, who attempted to patent in their country this ancient knowledge, for example 131 yoga-related patents were traced in the US alone in 2007, and after uproar in the parliament and media, Government of India took up the issue with USPTO. Thereafter, a team of yoga gurus from nine schools working with government officials and 200 scientists from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) scanned 35 ancient texts including the Hindu epics, the Mahabharata and the Bhagwad Gita, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras to register each native pose, and by the end of 2009, 1500 asanas were added.
Benefits of TKDL
At least 36 cases had been identified by the EPO and 40 cases by USPTO, using TKDL by 2010. As a future project, a people’s Register of Biodiversity is also being set up by the government, to document and protect, traditional knowledge passed down through the oral tradition, under India’s National Biodiversity Act of 2002.
Many patents have been withdrawn from EPO after the agreement with TKDL and in many claims have been amended. Some patents that have been withdrawn after agreement of EPO with TKDL are:
· EP1607006 for “Functional berry composition”
· EP1781309 for “Nelumbinis semen extract for preventing and treating ischemic heart disease and pharmaceutical composition and health food containing the same”
· EP2044850 for “Method for altering the metabolism characteristic of food products
· EP1889638 for “Medicaments and food for treatment or prevention of obesity and/or diabetes containing cicer arietinum extract”
· EP1807098 for “Herbal compositions for treatment of diabetes”
· EP1967197 for “Use of preparations, purifications and extracts of aloe”
· EP2065031 for “Skin treatment composition”
· EP1906980 for “Method of treatment or managment of stress”
· EP1660106 for “Biotherapeutics for Mitigation of health Disorders from TerminaliaArjuna“
· EP2015761 for “Methods and composition for treating sore throat”
· EP1937231 for “Pharmaceutical compositions for the treatment of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease”
· EP2133089 for “Compositions for the treatment of disorders of the upper respiratory tract and influenza syndromes”
· EP2133080 for “Compounds containing equol“
· EP2070545 for “Oral compositions for the prevention and treatment of inflammatory disorders of the colon”
· EP2101800 for “Extracts from the skin of fruits of plants from genus vitis, compositions containing the same and a process for its manufacture”
· EP2227247 for “Anticancer composition comprising plant stem cell line derived from Taxus Cambium or Procambium“
· EP1841320 for “Methods and pharmaceutical compositions useful for treating psoriasis”
